The Gallery of Wondrous Sundries

Posted on November 15, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
Nickolas Zachary Brown
Five Cataclysms
Five Cataclysms
Mid Levels

Welcome to the Gallery of Wondrous Sundries, dear Adventurers! Here you’ll find all manner of things that’ll leave you positively astounded! Items and creatures and…things from your world and many others, cursed and enchanted and bewitched and rigged for all manner of fascinating and dark purposes! Beware the Lower Galleries, for invaders have put it in a state of chaos; exhibits run amok! So have a wondrous day future exhib- er, dear visitors!

This 47 page adventure presents a museum dungeon level with about 150 rooms. It’s a funhouse-ish level, with a linear/branching design and vegetable people. Yes, you read that right. Less than I am looking for, unfortunately.

This is the museum level. Every megadungeon needs a museum level, it seems, and this is the one for the five cataclysms megadungeon. I’m usually down for some Five Cataclysms shit, but, this IS a museum level and I think I almost always loathe those. Too passive, in general, I think, as a concept. Anyway, this is the museum level. It’s divided in to two sections. The upper half is the standard museum level with robot guards, jellyfish cleaners, things to not touch, and a spectral beetle curator. The second half, behind one choke point, you’re given permission to loot as long as you kill the invaders. They are the culinars; dudes that all look like food. Yeah. Tomato berserkers and baby carrots. Those are actual entries from the wanderer table. 

I don’t know what the fuck to say about this. The food people thing? The usual passivity of  a museum level? I mean, you go in to room after room and see an exhibit. You can immediately get attacked by it or you can look at it and decide if you want to fuck with it or not, with little indication of if you SHOULD fuck with it or not. Room after room of this. I suppose it’s the lack of variety in the play that really gets to me. If every room is a Grimtooth then … why? Why bother? 

A typical room description might be “ Upon a lectern rests a human-leather tome and beside it rests an inkwell, a quill, and a razor. The inkwell is empty, but stained with old blood.” So, pretty to the point. Not very evocative. The point is interacting with the object in the room, not the vibe. THis is, in fact, one of the better rooms. The book is written in blood, with many blank pages. FIlling the inkwell with blood causes the pages to be filled in more and more. The story of a barbarian tribe that, as you refill the inkwell, stat to overrun the world. Which actually happens in the real world. Except you probably wont know that until you exit the dungeon. Decisions only matter if you know you making the decision. Although, I guess, you can intuit whats going to happen; it is, after all, a book written in blood from an inkwell of blood you have to personally refill. Anyway, that’s the vibe of the descriptions and what a decent room interactivity looks like.

And that’s a pretty positive example. Another room has a “blue metal device”, whatever that is. No description. Ever. Great. But if you destroy it then you can take the blue spoon that ethereally therered to it. I don’t know. Maybe I’m missing some pop culture reference? How do you destroy a blue metal device?

Of the more serious entries we get this wandering monster: “A Statue of Death, Finger Outstretched Hostile; Glides through the gallery, attempting to poke its victim with its outstretched finger. Will retreat once a kill is secured. He has, of course, Finger of Death. 

So, somewhat jokey. A little more than I prefer in my adventures. Or, perhaps, a different type of humor than I prefer in my adventures. Room descriptions that are less evocative and more … fun house? In other words, here’s a thing, do you want to fuck with it? The map doesn’t really support anything other than museum play. There’s just not enough going on here. It needs more. Factions. Sub-zones. Some things to take advantage of, in the greater context outside of a single room. I guess I’m saying that it’s a very STATIC level. And static levels are not very fun levels. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is broke. I can has sadz?

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/390796/The-Gallery-of-Wondrous-Sundries?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 4 Comments

The Buried Settlement of Khandar Thung

Posted on November 13, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By 1st Adventures
1st Adventures
1e
Levels 1-3

The Buried Settlement of Khandar Thung is a First Edition adventure designed for a group of 3-6 first level players. Characters can advance to level 3 if they successfully complete the adventure. Embark on an epic quest in the enigmatic village of Riverfront Dale, a place plagued by mysterious disappearances. Venture into treacherous landscapes, face ancient magic, and delve deep beneath the mountain to unveil the secrets of a long-lost buried settlement. Will you reveal the truth and save the village?

This “Thirty page” adventure features two dungeons with about 35 rooms total. It’s a VTT only adventure, requiring Roll20 to even look at. An attempt to go to new places, technically, it fails at every turn.

We are not luddites at the 3.048 meterpole. Pushing the frontiers of adventure design, trying new things, finding better ways are embraced here. I mean, it’s gotta be better than the same old second edition formula, right? Time marches on, friend, and we need to get with the meta! In 2023 it just seems like the polite thing to do is include a map and/or art handouts that can be easily uploaded and shown to your players on some VTT platform. I mean, in person is absolutely the best experience but I recognize that virtual is here to stay and thus we should do some kind of bare minimum to bring value to that platform also. 

How about, though, the VTT exclusive adventures? The ones that exist no where else but on VTT? You don’t get a download, just an import in to Roll20. That’s … interesting. 1st Adventures here has one of those for us to try, for 1e. I am a bit perplexed on the No Downloads thing, since that would make it far, far easier for the DM to get an overview of the adventure and do a read-through, but, sure, I’m open minded. Which will only lead you down path in D&D adventures … this is shit.

There are four scenes, I guess. Little girl yelling for help in the forest. Then find a witch in the forest. Then go in to the caves. Then go from the caves in to the lost city. There’s supposed to be this town also. There’s a photo of it and it’s fucking hyperlinked all the fuck over the place. There is no detail of it though. We’re supposed to learn that a lot of people go missing, but, we get nothing but an artist rendition of a village. Perfect. If you can’t handle this much then your selected format isn’t worth the virtually free bits it’s composed of.

The map and DM text is on the same “page’ in the adventure. I don’t think this works well for screen shares, but whatever. The very first read-aloud in the adventure is “You walk through a green and lush valley.” Yup., It’s all in second person POV. This, alone, should be enough to condemn an adventure to hell for eternity. 

Oh, wait, wait … the adventure is supposed to get you to level three. All six of you. What is that, at least 24,000gp in loot, if we assume 20,000gp per? The first caves have about 1300. Hmmm … me thinks we’re not going to hit level three in this one, kiddos. 

Ok, so, full color maps that are terrible for the DM to read. They don’t even look that great, being muddled and full of useless detail. One of my favorite parts is the fonts used. The background is black. The text is white. The higlighted color is purple. SO you get a purple font on a black background. This is nigh impossible to read. Why not just make the highlight color charcoal instead? 

Encounter one is “Emerge from the forest, you see a girl running towards you in desperation. She has a pale face and her eyes reflect fear and worry. “Please, help me!” she says with a trembling voice. “My older brother, Ashle, has disappeared. I don’t know what to do, please, help me.” — Yup, ‘emerge’ from the forest. And the the next lines, for the DM text say “ they can decide whether they want to help her or not. If they decide to help her.” This is what we get. This is what your money buys you. The DM text letting us know that the players can have their characters help the girl. Or not. 

The witch of the forest? She’s a druid. And the fucking garbage text REFERS to her as a druid. In read-aloud. This is TERRIBLE. We DO. NOT. do this. She’s a fucking witch. She looks like a witch. Describe her lik she’s an old hag. Don’t fucking ruin the fucking mystery by telling the fucking party that shes a druid. And ESPECIALLY not in the read-aluod. Fucking christ. 

Which tracks with the rest of the read-aloud, which over-reveals room details left and right, destroying the back and forth between the players and the DM that makes up the heart of D&D. 

Whatever. 

It wants to hyperlink. We get 300 hyperlinks to that artist rendition of the village. In the most ridiculous places. Like, when you free prisoners in the caves it hyperlinks to the photo because the village name is mentioned. Just a simple search and replace, I’m sure. And, the creatures, which are hyperlinked to stats? Well, some are. And some are not. And those that are get 5e char sheets and some weird ass textual stat block that is clearly programmatic. 

THis is just fucking garbage. Fight after fight with almost no interactivity beyond that. Garbage read-aloud. No real formatting. It’s just fucking terrible. So much so that I feel the need to point out that all VTT adventures can’t possibly be as bad as this, can they?

1e my ass.

This is $7 at DriveThru. No preview, since you can’t own it unless you have a Roll20 account.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/458021/Roll20-VTT-The-Buried-Settlement-of-Khandar-Thung-1e?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Reviews | 4 Comments

Thralls of the Sun

Posted on November 11, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 

By Olav Nygard, Johan Nordinge
Cyclopean Games
Blood & Bronze
Level 1

Enter the Slave Pits, where the wretched are sent to perish. You have stepped away from the light of life-giving Shamash; your trespasses have forced the divine eye of the heavens to dismiss you into the shadows, for if you ever met his gaze again his flaming wrath would surely strike you down. But one day, maybe, you can win your freedom back: by hard work, by cunning or by blood in the Sun’s court.

This 48 page mesopotamia themed adventure features a dungeon with four levels and about 110 rooms. Think of it more as a small region or town and not a dungeon … but with dungeon-like elements. It might be groovy as a three-shot or so or someone looking for something different. Which is a weird way of me saying it’s interesting but a little unworkable?

We’re in some kind of mesopotamia land. You get Shamash and Akkadian references, but it also seems a little dark sunish outside with some ancient civ stuff also lurking around. Okey doke, got it? You’ve been chucked in to the slave pits. You live in a big central cave underground with the other slaves and get taken to work in a tunnel each morning by some guards. Who are the only people with any lights. Oh, also you’re wearing a collar that explodes when any sunlight touches it. Ok, intro is over … what do you do next?

I’m gonna have to jump around a bit for this review to make any sense. The adventure is described in four levels. The upper two are the main levels. This is where the big slave cave, tunnels out to the sunlight, guard posts, work sites and so on. Let’s call this a kind of “town.” And then, down below, are two more levels. This has a tomb in it and is more dungeon-like, at least in the way we think of traditional dungeons. 

But, before the keys start, there are a coupe of pages of notes, including a How To Run This section. It suggests the adventure keys be used in four separate ways, along with some atmospheric notes and themes to go with each section. First, have the party get dumped in. Darkness, despair, exploding head slave collars, etc. Then introduce the slave camp. You finding your way in the “big city”, exploring the slave camp, being sent to work … and finding a light so you can explore the tunnels. Then you’re in the tunnels and exploring, like a more traditional dungeon, and looking for a way out. This is going to be a combination of something like “exploring the kings palace”, since there are guard posts around, and exploring a dungeon, since its dark, unknown, and does in fact have some dungeon levels and puzzles in it. Along the way, both in the slave camp and in the keys, you’ll find a decent number of puzzles (giant heads!) and NPC’s to treat with. And most of them are looking to play Let’s Make A Deal. In fact, the adventure might seem a little slower than most because of this. You both are and are not in a dungeon, and this is one of the better products that communicates that kind of vibe. (Although, I don’t think there are a lot of products that are, appropriately, going for that vibe.) You’ve got a kind of slower “town” pace, with talking to folk, with some Work Your SLave Shift stuff going on in between, while you plan and plot. For once, one of these “escape as prisoners” things really does have enough room to breathe and let the players grow and explore. Most of these sorts of things handle the escape in the very first room; it’s really just an excuse to strip the characters of their gear. But this puts them in an environment large enough, and complex enough, for them to plan and work their little schemes. Sneaking off to explore. Trying to get food and supplies. Making deals with unsavoury folk. And this is all great. If you think of this like a kind of “escape the slum” town adventure then you’ve got the right mindset. Kind of. I mean, you are still slaves. 

Our room descriptions are decent, for the most part. Nothing great but solid enough to support the adventure at hand. Things like: “Empty. Damp walls gleaming with moisture. A rotten rope and some splintered logs on the stony and debris-covered floor hint at the original structure.”

There’s really quite a bit going on here and a lot of good encounters/situations to help support the basic premise of the play. The mesopotamia theme is gonna be rough to work in, and continue on with. It’s meant to be the first game, so, starting with nothing, in the slave pits, is not exactly a gimp. And, in fact, the degree of agency the players have over their characters situations is really quite interesting. A little more on guard bribes, or general slave uprisings, or the like might be in order, since it’s VERY light in this regard. But, if you see the players as loners and/or the general populace clearly not in to going all spartacus, then you’ve got a solid little adventure for continued play. Every resource found is a treasure  … with real treasures being used to bribe people for more of the basics. And it does this all without going too far down the path of torture porn. Just enough to bring the setting home and makes those simple supplies worthwhile while not so much as to make it a grind or eye rolling. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The eighteen page preview shows you the intro sections, a few keys, and the very good map of level one. You should be able to infer things from there.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/176543/Thralls-of-the-Sun?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 7 Comments

The Ruin in the Savage Wastes

Posted on November 8, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Connor McCloskey
Black Gamberson
OSE
Level 1

10 years ago, a catastrophic earthquake struck a stoic keep on the borderlands of human civilization. Three days later, the keep was attacked from within. How, no one knows. The few survivors say that daemon men from under the ground breached from within the fortress itself, and butchered all who stood against them, leaving the heroic Castellan and his guard unable to mount an effective defense.  A decade later, the eldest brother of the Castellan is to be named a Baron, and has sent out a decree; Anyone who can bring him his fallen brother’s sword in one month’s time will receive 200 Silver, and a hectare of land in his Barony.

This eight page dungeon presents two levels of a certain ruined Keep in a Borderlands location. Great evocative writing, good formatting, and enough interactivity at level one to not make me mad. It also gets purple in places and could use a little more focus when it comes to the monster descriptions. 

This is a duel version adventure, for OSE and Shadowdark. And while duel stated would normally indicate something bad, and while I have been on a poor run with Shadowdark, it is also true that the better Shadowdark adventures DO in fact channel a decent OSR vibe. This is also the first adventure by a new designer. And it’s got three stars on DriveThru. New rule: five star drivethru products and three star products are actually pretty ok. Seriously, whoever gave this tree stars is a fuck. Sure, in some perfect world then this might be a perfectly average adventure. But that’s a world in which 95% of shit don’t suck. 

So, ye olde keep is hit by an earthquake and then some grimlocks tunnel up from below and wipe everyone out. Not grimlocks, in name, but they are grimlocks. Primitive humans, they eat your adrenal glands. What’s that western movie, the one with the grimlock cannibals? Bone Hatchet or something like that? Yeah, that’s what we’ve got here. Some sub-human cannibals. 

And let me tell you, dude brings the vibe for that. “The sound of a rabbit screaming a

death curdle. The Ruk beyond break off its legs at the small joints and drink it’s terrified blood.” Ouchies! This sort of thing is done a couple of times. It does a decent job of communicating the vibe without explicitly appealing to gire. It also, I think, would motivate the players. And player motivation is THE BEST way to get the people at the table engaged. In one room we’ve got a bandit, quietly weeping, hanging from a pillar in chains: “Significant amount of face (including eyes) and chunks of legs and hands eaten. Wants only to die. Begs. Name is Marsor. Asks that Hana in Last Tree be told that he loved her dearly but never said. If Hana is with the expedition she will weep heartily for him, say sweet goodbyes, and end him herself. “ Yeah, it’s kind of tropey. But, tropes exist because they are good when done well, and I think this is done well. It’s visceral, again without, IMO, being gory. There’s this appeal to human emotion also, real human things, which helps ground it. That’s some grim fucking shit right there, even without your (potential) hireling doing her thing. Fuck those dudes! Time to homo sapien those shits! Note also, that this is not drug out in a paragraph or two. It gets in, stabs you in the liver and gets out again. That’s how you fucking do it!

There are spots where the writing is quite good. Look, we’re not talking Paris Review, but, also, this is a fucking D&D adventure, so almost anyuthing not cringy will work. There’s a little village, the new last outpost of civilization, included. The village of Last Tree. It has the last living real oak tree before things turn to scrub oaks. The village overview ends with “the tree died last year.” Sweeeett!

The inn gets the following description. I’m also including the first potential hireling:: “Hot meals, warm ale, cool stone floor, ice cold bar wench. A beautiful stone fireplace; not used. Cheap board (3 GP) and drink (3 SP), expensive food (3 GP). Thugs for Hire (Bandit stats): Half a share of treasure. Tinal -Neutral-Tattooed, slaps back, in deep gambling debt. RP: Untrustworthy Jason Mamoa.” Terse. Good description. For both the inn and the NPC. Gives us a vibe and lets the DM run with it. That’s what the fuck a good description should do. Nary a wasted word. And just about every single description in this adventure is done that way. Written to give a good vibe in a minimal amount of words. Formatting contributes pretty well to this. Bolding, bullets, whitespace all combine for something that is pretty easy to read. Not quite rock star levels but still really really good without falling in to the OSE minimalism format. 

A few notes. There is an overland portion that is rather week. Kind of like a six hex hex crawl. It’s doing nothing. And, it has a rift that could be confused for the valley in B2. The Unfathomable Crevasse. It’s directly between the ruins and the town, so it invites exploration … with none really given or much of a description. The entire overland is much like that and is not effective.

The text gets quite purple in places. The fortress to the north looms dejectedly. Or, a wall that looms above the ruins of the keep, silent, fuming, mourning despair. Uh huh. I’m down for some looming but not the mourning and fuming and dejectedly shit is a little much. I get it, we’re trying to inject that despair and forlorn vibe. But that ain’t it.

There’s also an issue with the monsters. We’ve got a wight, some “spirits” and the Rak baddies. The wight, the former Castellan, could use a good solid description. He’s gonna maybe be a central part of the adventure. (Note, he’s not really focused on in the adventure, but, his presence is there and he can be used to advantage or encountered as a baddie … good focus there without going on and on.) Same for the Rak. Bring those evocative descriptions to them. And, there’s a decent number of “spirits” in the adventure. Some are just apparitions, but some, it seems, are hostile. Telling which is which is not always easy. And, I assume that “spirit” is a creature in the OSE manual? This could be done much better.

Finally, you’re there to get the Castellans old sword. A symbol of power for the new baron. You’re returning it to a priest.wise woman in the town, the representative of the baron. When you get back to town with the sword and go see her she MIGHT be a little off. Cause she’s an imposter now, her body buried under the floorboards. “This person is an impostor, a Cultist of Ramlaat, whose influence grows in the region.” Noice! Good complication when returning to town for something that most folk would just write off as a pretext. 

Really good effort here. I might point to some order of battle issues, the overland, a little sparseness in the interactivity as reason to go No Regerts. Soe may be due to the size, or lack thereof, of the adventure. But, really, quite good. 

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/450587/The-Ruin-in-the-Savage-Wastes?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 22 Comments

The Golden Voyage

Posted on November 6, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Jeff Simpson
Buddyscott Entertainment
B/X
Levels 4-6

The Steaming Sea, full of exotic adventure beckons! Ancient temples overflow with treasure, curses surface from the depths of time. Serve the most wealthy of all Sultans and win his favour by journeying on a Golden Voyage!

This 49 page island crawl has about 25 populated hexes and a few mini-dungeons as well as the main event: twentish rooms on two levels populated by an evil wizard whos captured the sultans daughter. It’s minimally keyed with a lot of fetch quests.

I wish I had a copy of Isle of Dread to compare this to. Instead of steaming jungles you are sailing the seas. You see, the sultans kid has been taken and you’re out sailing trying to find the island shes on. You wander about until you find the right one. Predictably … it’s on the far edge of the map. 🙂 Anyway, along the way you meet a host of people who all kind of want you to do something. “Hey man, go sprinkle some perfume on the idol in the nearby temple and I’ll give you this purple key.” Ok, not quite that bad; it’s actually a magic horn. But, there’s a lot of that going on. Sometimes you get something like “you see a giant birds nest on a mountain peak” and then a couple of hexes of description of the island while you try to get to it. Cause, I guess, that’s where you keep a princess? 

As that implies, a lot of this adventure appears somewhat disconnected from itself. You go some place, it’s unlikely that an evil wizard with skeletons lives there with a kidnapped chick, and you move on to the next place. The locations don’t really lead one to another, except in a few isolated cases. This does mimic the basic plot of, say, The Odyssey, but that is literature and this is a D&D adventure. Approaching it more like a hex crawl with a “oh yeah, if you find the princess then that would be cool also” would be a little more in line with what the adventure has going on. That’s not the hook, but that’s what the adventure is. 

I’m not exactly enamored with this. It’s not a terrible thing, but, also, it doesn’t really have much going for it. The descriptions are minimal. “A desiccated corpse stands perfectly still against the north wall.” or “This chapel to Set is kept by a spectre that takes the shape of a sha.” or “Storage: A storage room contains several boxes of bath salts” These tend to tell us what hte room is but not HOW the rooms is. Bedroom: This room is a bedroom. It has a bed. There is a minotaur.” That’s only a slight exaggeration of the adventure. Maybe add “it is crying” and you’ll have the completed room and/or hex. We don’t really have the situations that make up a good crawl, dungeon or hex, and certainly don’t have the descriptions that might make the locations come alive for the DM. 

The adventure opens with that “It’s up to the DM to bring the adventure to life” Gygax quote. My boundless optimism corrupted to cynicism knows no bounds. This is the realm of making excuses. We all have access to the monster tables. “Just roll on them and make an adventure!” does not an adventure make. And if we can accept that is not enough then we have accepted that some degree of effort is required … and thus our discussion can take us there. The purpose of the designer is to put things together for the DM to make their lives easier. At the table running it, from a pedestrian view, but, also, to inspire them to run it. To bring the rooms and encounters to life. To do things that get the players engaged in the adventure THROUGH the DM. This is the value we seem in a published adventure. This MUST be the value we seek, for everything else is already present in the random tables in the basic handbooks. 

If you’re an adventure writer you gotta figure this shit out man. I know you want a Fantastic Voyage, ala The Oddyssey. And that means you need some scope … which I think always means size. But that’s a lot of work and a lot of pages. You gotta really buckle down and figure out how to pack that scope in your page count and in to your number of encounters. How to make them more than minimal and capture the dynamism that all good adventures bring to the table. 

For remember: everything every published in the history of the world is now available to be run in the system of your choice. How does one compete with this? The effort is non-trivial.

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/447571/The-Golden-Voyage-DIGITAL-EDITION?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 10 Comments

Dead Man’s Bounty

Posted on November 4, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Ben Thompson
99c Adventures
OSR ... and 5e ...
Level 3

Deep in the unforgiving bayous of Chaumont, a weathered journal found among the bones of a long-forgotten officer hints at solving a tantalizing, decades-old mystery — the final fate of the notorious Bloodsail Rovers. The lost treasure of these cruel pirates was rumored to be immense… but perhaps some ghosts are best left undisturbed. Twenty years ago, a vicious group of pirates known as the Bloodsail Rovers terrorized the coasts and inlets of the Kingdom of Chaumont. Under the command of the fearsome Captain Jacques de la Rouge Beausoleil, these pirates earned their fame with the daring capture of the royal galleon Navarette, which at the time was carrying a huge payload of gold and gems from the Frontierlands… as well as a mysterious artifact imbued with powerful dark magic. The Bloodsail Rovers disappeared from history not long after capturing the Navarette, and were never heard from again. No coins from the galleon’s treasure hold were ever recovered, leading to wild speculations ranging from deadly sea monster attacks to buried treasure hoards on remote desert islands. Perhaps there was no Navarette at all, and the entire thing was just an old fisherman’s tale, made up to fill childrens’ imaginations with dreams of fantastical wealth. Our heroes are about to discover the truth.

His 62 page adventure features a ruined swamp fort with nineteen rooms. Long italics, overwritten DM text. First person narrative. Mary Sue. It’s all in here, waiting for you. To mourn the death of modern world. Down progress and up the wild tyrannies of barbarism!

Ohs Nos! Pirates! Better go get em! Or, maybe, you find a coin from a long lost pirate treasure. Anyway, you travel through the swamp to a little town. Inside you pick up Mary Sue and go to an abandoned fort five days away. Grrr! Bugbear pirates! Better kill em! Ohs Nos! Then a pirate skeleton comes to life and attacks! Yeah! Adventure! 

This resembles the late 1e and 2e era, with massive amounts of DMs text and a loose plot line to hang shit off of. As you travel towards the swamp town you see a rowboat sailoverhead, full of skeletons. Turns out there’s a necromancer and a swamp giant fighting in the swamp up ahead, on the way to the town. I guess he lives, like, 80 feet from the town? There’s no scale on the map. Anyway, whatever, there are eight or so encounters on the way to the town, the majority somehow related to this necromancer/giant fight. No doubt because “a rowboat in the sky full of skeletons!” would be cool. 

Inside the town you get attacked by the local tough. Your group of level threes is attacked by the local tough. Your group of level threes.  It is at this point that the text reminds the DM to remind the players that killing people in the streets is illegal in this town. Uh huh. In a dark alley. Behind the inn. With that being the only real building in town. Uh huh. Don’t worry though, the Mary Sue show sup to save you. A LONG text block describes the bard in the inn and how everyone masturbates over him. He’s a level six illusionist. A level six. Hanging out in the inn. SInging like a bard. Saving your ass. And ready to join your party! So, yeah, the Mary Sue is coming along! How fun for all the players! 

The text, both the read-aloud AND the DM text, are in first person. “You pick your way through the swamp …” or “He’s the leader of the group that’s going to try and beat you up in section 2-2 …” or “He tells you that the guild …” This is so fucking basic, in terms of adventure writing, that it is beyond me how it still shows up in 2023. Oh, the read-aloud. The LONG read-aloud. That no one will pay attention to. That is in italics, so it’s hard to fucking read. That’s full of “it appears to be” padded out shit. And that goes for the DM text also. Full of appears to be. And long. LOoooooonnngggggg. Like, two pages for a simple encounter long. “What appears to be a lone man … You mean, a lone man?

You want some XP? How about 750gp worth of it. That’s your loot.

This thing is just garbage, front to back. 63 pages for twenty encounters in the dungeon. Fucking christ. It amazes me that people do this shit. Put together a whole adventure. Manage to get it all down on paper. Make it look like one of those fancy pants formats and even stick some fucking art in it. But there is no attempt to actually figure out how to do it well. How to avoid the most common mistakes. It’s the same shit now for forty fucking years. Pople thinking this is how you do it. 

This is $1 at DriveThru. You get to see the first seven pages, which includes the first few wilderness encounters on the way to the town. So, you do get to see the quality of the writing. Good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/456847/LC2-Dead-Mans-Bounty?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 8 Comments

The Scorching Gantlet

Posted on November 1, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Andrew Walter
Forgotten Oubliette of Forgetfulness
OSR
Levels 2-3

Run the Gantlet of Farradok! Imprisoned by a sadistic fire giant and stripped of their weapons and equipment, the adventuring party must escape from the fiery labyrinths beneath his court – but it won’t be easy. His three evil champions and retinue of hobgoblins have also joined the game…

This 43 page adventure presents a dungeon with two levels and about forty rooms. It’s one of thos e”you’ve been captured and stripped of your shit and have to escape” dungeons, with the usual puzzles, traps, and forced combats. And no treasure. Or decent formatting. Or evocative descriptions of any type. Enjoy!

Have I already done the camping thing? Whatever … if I come to you and say we’re going camping this weekend, what do you think of? Are we backpacking in? Are we parking the RV in the  middle of a football field lot and watching grandkids bike with 600 members of the family? Hanging out with a bunch of college kids around a fire getting drunk? Driving off down a forest road to a secluded spot to pitch a tent? Once of those definitions is valid for a lot of different people. Three’s no right answer, just as there’s no one true way to play and enjoy D&D. Which is a mighty suspicious way to open a D&D adventure review …

Good thing I control the narrative then, isn’t it? I mean, I’m the one buying this garbage and taking the time out to look at it and then write about it. And, fortunately for my sanity, I have standards and know which fucking definition is “correct.” The adventure, in the introduction, proudly proclaims that it “rejects imagined product and design ‘standards’” Wunderbar! I’m down for this shit! Smash the patriarchy! It’s 2023! Let’s push the boundaries of what we can do, examine the base assumptions we make about D&D adventures, modernize it while keeping the core of what makes them the magic that they are! We choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard! Oh, wait .. it’s used here as an excuse to not try at all …

You’ve been captured by a fire giant and his 120 hobgoblin minions. You’re stripped of your weapons, armor, and gear and dropped down in the dungeon to escape. There are three champions that chase you, all Running Man without Richard Dawson or the RUnning Man Home Game. A bunch of forced combats at level two, how nice! And, the adventure also notes, with perhaps some pride, that there is little to no treasure … the reward is getting out alive. Forced combats and no treasure for leveling … I wonder if we are really playing OD&D? It is not an OD&D experience, that’s for sure. The bad old days of killer DM’s and killer dungeons. Worry not though, you get to the roll on the “Hobgoblin Punishment table, so, also, you can start with 2/3hp! Or any of a host of other further gimps. DId I mention that the dungeon is slammed full of 2HD creatures? And 3HD creatures? And a smattering of 5HD creatures? And you without gear, weapons, or armor, tsk tsk tsk …

You are charged with “Find the blue key to escape!” Seriously. Find the blue key. Once you do find it and get back to the exit gate you get to answer a riddle and each time you answer wrong someone else gets turned to stone. Did I mention the LARGE number of insta-death shit in this? The fickle hand of fate is in full force in this one!

The adventure is El Senor Grimtooth forward. Witness: “As soon as the Blue Key is placed in the lock, a magical force yanks it out before it can be turned and flings it into the hole in the ceiling. The door by which the party entered slams shut and locks, and the holes in the walls begin filling the room with scalding water.” Doors slamming shut are always the sign of quality. There’s no real puzzle here. You just get to figure out how to open the locked doors. 

And thus it goes. Wander from room to room. Face a Grimtooth puzzle/trap. Engage in a forced combat. Have a wanderer roll every turn. 

Evocative descriptions are essentially nonexistent, being maybe a word or two of description at most. “Warm foetid water flows at a swift pace” That’s it. The formatting is VERY double-spaced. There is A LOT of white space between sections of text. So much so that it is hard to follow. (I have this fucking fight at work at all the time; the devs LUV putting in WIDE line breaks, and don’t seem to notice the cognitive dissonance this causes by breaking a grouping effect. Prob because they are clueless to the information that is being grouped.)  Weird bolding of shit is everywhere. I’m sure there must be some reason to it, but I can’t tell. Room numbers? Monsters? Secret doors? Equipment? I don’t know what else.

Anyway, yet another deathtrap dungeon, this one a challenge, with an escape the dungeon without shit motif. 

This is $2.50 at DriveThru. You get the entire thing as a preview, so, very good preview! Well done! At least there’s a foundation to build on …

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/456846/The-Scorching-Gantlet-UD1?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 9 Comments

Echoes from Fomalhaut #11 – On Windswept Shores

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
Gabor Lux
First Hungarian d20 Society
S&W

This is a 68 page zine, issue number eleven in the Echoes from Fomalhaut series. It contains three principal items: the tomb of a dead elf lord, a massive hex crawl, and an abbey of law ripe for plundering. All three are fine examples of adventures, but not hitting the high peaks of expectations. I’m going to briefly cover the hex crawl and abbey and then look at the elven tomb a little more. Lovers of The Judges Guild will be very happy with this, and, frankly, it has everything a good zone should.

The hex crawl makes up about thirty of the digest pages, covering mostly some larger islands. It feels like there may be 75 to a hundred of the hexes populated, so, it’s quite dense. The hexes are generally fine examples of well done situations. A village, subject to sea raiders, preyed upon by a ogre who claims his nature is claimed, and a vampire nearby … I wonder if thats the ghost-like spirit that leads them to safety during times of trouble? Gotta keep the wolves away from the sheep, after all. “1 SMED: Cages with charred skeletons and stakes decorate the burned ruins of a pirate stronghold. 6 wraiths haunt the place, offering their final treasure map to any who would first carry out their vengeance against their slayers in Poicette. “ This is a good example of a hex. A little bit of description in the way of charred skeletons and stakes. This leads to the six wraiths, standing in their dread countenance, burned, decaying? And their silent charge to right their wrong. That’s what a good description does … it leads you to more than the words on the page. And the brief descriptions here, ranging from a few sentences to a paragraph to almost a page in some instances, offer that kind of description again and again. A brief idea, a situation, that can be expanded upon and, most importantly, inspires the DM to expand on it. THis is the kind of thing that makes you want to run it … which is what ALL adventures should do.

The abbey is a fine example of a lawful dungeon. We all know evil is ripe for murder hobo home invasions. And druids are assholes always worthy of being butchered for their fucked up plans and views. Most parties would side with law. But, in a world in which you’re just trying to grow enough turnips for the winter and not get eaten by wolves … well, Law can be just as bad as Chaos. And, remember, all that wealth in the Keep in B2? Hex crawling has always felt a little more morally ambiguous anyway. We’ve got the town outside of the abbey, with a healthy criminal element. And then the above board abbey descriptions. And then The Winter Tunnels underneath … a secret way in and more dungeoncrawly than the abbey proper.  Lots of great descriptions in this and things to put together. A room with records tells us of a Brother who went missing in the Dragon Cave baths. Which perhaps causes the party to investigate those areas further. Which leads down down to goblin town. Err, I mean, the mineral caves proper, and their giant lizards. The town and abbey aboveground get as much effort as the tunnels, but, I might have appreciated a little more of an overview of the town. It’s there, but a little lite, IMO. Also, I find these parts tough to run the way I like to run them as this is written. I need a little more of an overview to get the vibe and get the juices running. It’s present, in the keys, but you have to kind of put it together a little more than I think you should have to. But, still, this is an excellent excellent little place. Perfect for that hex crawl. 

Elven Grave – Levels 5-7

In ages past, there were none as great as the elven lords, and none as strong as their hosts. Some 600 years ago, Narion, Son of the Pure Fire was the last reflection of this greatness, and his alliance with the race of men the last great undertaking of elvenkind. United against the arctic empire of Sark, the Twelve Kingdoms were saved at a great price; but Narion lay among the dead, and dead were most of his warriors also, a loss from which the elven kingdoms never recovered. The body of the lord was laid to rest somewhere in the mountains in a beautiful marble tomb, and carefully hidden with magic. Only elven songs recorded the way so pilgrims might visit in remembrance of the great gift Narion and his kin gave in sacrifice. But that was long ago, and the pilgrims have stopped coming, while a few copies of the elven songbooks have found the way to the archives and libraries of men, where they await the discovery of treasure-seekers. What shall happen to the Elven Grave is not in question – the only uncertainty is “Who gets there first.”

This is, unsurprisingly, a little elven tomb. It’s got about twenty rooms and takes about five pages to describe. The map is a decent little affair with some variety to it, the sort of which you don’t usually see in something of this size. 

This is not a bad adventure and is better than the dreck regularly produced for the OSR. But, it’s also not a surprisingly good adventure. In some ways a victim of his own success … “I’m sorry Mr Nabokov, your new work is just not as good as Lolita …” I think, though, that several issues drive me in this direction. There is this lack of melancholy in this. Not that, perhaps, we need to hit it overly hard, but the concept of a high elven lord, fallen in battle, and now lying a tomb, once in splendor and now waterlogged, is not hit very hard. Adding to this is a bit of plundering by barbarians. THis should be a fine concept to add some more Barbarians at the Gates issues. And while these elements are present, the adventure doesn’t really drive them home much more than putting the words to the page. This is, I suspect , somewhat related to the Always On tomb descriptions. We get this up front “… cream-white marble and alabaster with frequent floral ornamentation. However, seeping groundwater and the decay of centuries have marred the tomb’s beauty with dirt, fallen stones, cracks, and unstable construction. The walls are darkened with damp grime, and the floor is covered with a slurry of mud and small debris” That’s not bad, by itself, but you need to keep turning back to it for inspiration. This keeps the individual entries short, but then also the tomb loses some charm. A problem yet to be solved in the OSR, I think. 

But, also, great ideas in this. The entrance, next to a glacier lake: “someone who looks on the lake surface from the correct angle can see a splendid marble archway on the opposite shore, and steep white marble stairs disappearing in the darkness”. That should be more than suitable for an entrance to the mythic underworld! We get suitable hints, by way of inscriptions on the wall, on how to solve a couple of puzzles and such. And, as a high point, a room with a pool of water. Shadows swirl within, staying there unless you touch the water. Also, there’s fire trap in the room … perhaps leading to someone plunging in to the water to cool off? And setting off the shadow, almost like a double trap. The shadows are supposed to be the remains of the drowned … which perhaps could have used a little more, a word or two more to bring the drowned shadows to life more, so to speak.

Descriptions range from “Scratching noises come from within the chained sarcophagus, which

contains a mummy.” to the more elaborate “ 3. The pavilion-grave of Olorme: Cool air in this vaulted 30’ crypt. The grave of OLORME (Rune Name) rests under a canopy. The source of the cold is a colony of brown mould (1 Hp/turn outside the canopy and 1d8 Hp/r if freed, grows rapidly from heat) covering the sarcophagus in the manner of thick fabric.” Those are, I think, typical examples. Perhaps a little too minimalistic. You can see, in the brown mold example, a more typical Melan writing where he inserts the mechanics in to the description to form a situation. The formatting, here, gets a little wonky and detracts a bit, specifically in this example but in a few other places as well. A little too busy. 

A decent tomb adventure and better than most!

This is $6.50 at DriveThru. The ten page preview will show you most of the elven tomb. That hex crawl is great!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/456520/Echoes-From-Fomalhaut-11-On-Windswept-Shores?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 4 Comments

The Wolf In The Labyrinth

Posted on October 28, 2023 by Bryce Lynch

By Malcolm Harbrow
Self Published
Call of Cthulhu

Howard Elbridge, a writer of weird fiction, has disappeared. Looking into his disappearance, the investigators will uncover his links to Miskatonic University’s “daring” set, and the history of a mysterious painting.

This 22 page investigation is … the usual Call of Cthulhu stuff? The usual adventure with the usual wordiness and lack of care in usability. Yeah? 

We haven’t check in on the big boy for awhile. Let’s see what he’s up to! Here’s one that is, quote “a Refreshingly different mystery… Excellent low-key investigation with a claustrophobic feel” according to another review site, as quoted by the product blurb on DriveThru. I’m sure the marketing is correct. It must be, right?! Off we go!

We’ve got a nice timeline, along with when recent newspaper stories appear. That’s good! And a nice selection of handouts. I always appreciate handouts in adventures. More adventure, D&D or no, should include them. They’re fun. Soak them in tea and burn the edges! The main plot is … fine, I guess? People get trapped in a painting. If you stare at it long enough them you can get trapped also. Or, maybe, swap places with someone in it. There’s a line or two in the adventure which does a good job conveying a wolf-like creature chasing people in a maze. Indistinct, eerie, a nice little job of conveying that. That is, alas, the last  nice thing I have to say.

This is the usual Call of Cthulhu mess of an adventure. Everything done in paragraph form and just tossed in willy nilly. Repetition beyond belief. “As noted above (in “first impressions of the painting”), the painting is striking and disturbing, depicting a number of tiny yet terrified human figures fleeing through some sort of angular labyrinth, pursued by the shadowy impression of a wolf — or maybe a wolflike beast?” That description must be repeated about eight times int he adventure. I get it, man. I get it. Everything is just tossed in. The painting, murders, newspaper offices, breaking, a faux secret society and pi … it’s just all THERE, in their own sections. So, eventually, you get to a section heading for the secret society, or onefor the pi. These are nearly the last pages of the adventure. There’s absolutely no attempt to integrate things in to the adventure, to make it a cohesive whole. I can’t imagine the amount of page flipping required to run this. What’s the PI doing now? How about sticking it in the main text with some suggestions? Or, you can just say there’s a gruff PI and let the DM do everything else … as the adventure does. 

Seriously, it’s the designers job to assist the DM in running the adventure. I don’t HAVE to do what you tell me, but, also, its up to you, as the designer, to stick something in that I CAN use if I so desire. Give me something to work with! This is all abstracted ideas.
They might show at the apartment and ask questions” Well then have he two fuckers do that in the text for the apartment. Fucking Christ man.

And, of course, it’s the classic Call of Cthulhu “just write a paragraph” style. No use of whitespace or bullets or bolding or anything else to help call attentinto things and/or make the judges life easier when running the adventure at the table. Just write a paragraph and hoe someone printed this out and used a highlighter, I guess. There’s offset boxes to describe people, but, really, its all the same information that is also presented in the main text of the product. “If persuasion fails, they could try their luck with Hans Trager, Schneider’s underpaid assistant.” Well maybe tell us about him when you’re describing the shop, not at the very end of the description when we’re talking about success rolls? Jesus. Have you never set a scene? Have you never Run a Cthulhu adventure before? Do you think somehow that this mindless vomiting of text is somehow conducive to running things.

The adventure, proper, is pretty straightforward. Once you get in to his house, which is pretty immediate, you see the painting and his journal and its immediately obvious what is going on. It’s gonna take seven days, in the presence of the painting, for anything interesting to happen. This seems like a loooooonnnngggg time, given the depth, or lack thereof, of the investigation. This doesn’t seem to me like it will work.

Worry not, OSR crowd, Just about everything ever produced by the OSR at this than every Call of Cthulhu adventure ever made. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. Your four page preview shows you nothing of the adventure, making it impossible to judge ot before buying it, which is the purpose of a preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/417454/The-Wolf-in-the-Labyrinth?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 5 Comments

The Raven and the Lone Star

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Bill Barsh
Pacesetter Games & Simulations
1e
Level 1

A ship lies in the frozen tundra of the far north. Its history is lost in time, but its future may spell doom for unwary adventurers.

Fourteen rooms over a three level ship over four and a half pages. It’s a shipwreck in the middle of the frozen tundra of Lambeau. Not an abundance of text, or an abundance of interesting. It’s a throwback to the early days of the OSR.

Why your level ones are out and about in the frozen tundras, blizzards, and glaciers is not mentioned. And while I’m usually ok with some hand waving, if you’re writing an adventure in SHerwood featuring Robin Hood then it might take just a wee bit more the designer to help the DM fit the adventure in to the parties lives. But, anyway, you’re in the far north and you see a full on ship, in the tundra and snow, down in a valley. Being good little adventurers, you go investigate. There’s nothing really to keep you on the ship, except … there’s this white raven cawing loudly when you get in to room one, the main deck. If you kill it then a witch shows up and makes you go get some spider eggs from below in penance. No stats for the witch; we’re referred to another Pacesetter adventure for more information. Other than that, I might hack apart the deck of the ship to kill shit from above or burn the ship down and loot stuff later. You’re not gonna get rich here; maybe 1500gp in cash/goods. But, also, a nontrivial amount of magic. +1 armors and weapons. And a bow that fires a 3d6 fire arrow once a turn! And a ring that does a 4d6  ice storm! I’m no stranger to powerful magic at level one, running a campaign once where I gave four copies of every magic item in the 1e DMG in session one. But that was the point of that game; I’m not sure about this one. 

Barsh keeps his read-aloud pretty simple. “While most of the floor of the room is covered with ice, a pile of ballast stones rises to form a small mound near the north wall.” This is a theme throughout the adventure: pretty lackluster descriptions. There’s not much here to inspire. Time and again that is seen in the descriptions, both in the read-aloud and in the DM text. That extends to the interactivity in the adventure. There’s just very little going on here except stabbing the next room of monsters. There IS a healing hot spring … in the very last room. I’m just gonna need more, even at level one, than moving from room to room and stabbing monsters. Yes, that’s right, I said it, Icewind Dale WAS much poorer than Baldur’s Gate. 

The read-aloud, when it does go in to detail, engages in over reveal. A core element of D&D should be the back and forth between the players and the DM. The characters investigate, they ask questions of the DM and the DM describes something back to them. The longer read-alouds here reveal too much about an scene, thus destroying that critical back and forth game play element. Instead of telling us that an elf is slumped over, wearing tattered chainmail and wiedling x, y, and z, instead tell us of a body slumped, or a warrior slumped. Use the word budget to do better than slumped and warrior, though. Then, in the DM text, provide the DM the information so that when the players investigate they see more. We’re not trying to be obtuse, we’re instead spending our verbosity budget wisely. 

And then, there are the bits of DM text that over explain and pad out things with backstory. “The tundra orc chief calls this room his lair during the hunting trip. This orc is old and missing one eye. He knows the area and has hunted around the ship his entire life. He lets the younger orcs perform the hunting duties while he directs and plans the operations.” Fifty words. Eight of which are relevant to running this encounter. Prune it back and focus on the environment, the interactivity, evocative descriptions … things useful AT THE TABLE. This emphasis on background data is irrelevant, gets in the way of scanning and running the text, and could be used to make the adventure actually interesting.

I’d say all we’re missing is an “appears to be … “in the adventure but that’s present also.

Low loot. Low interactivity. Non-evocative text. Padded out text. And, yet, Barsh keeps the text tight, leaning toward minimalism, meaning that he’s still writing better adventures than most 

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages and you get to see almost half the rooms. Good preview for checking out the text quality.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/432773/The-Raven-and-the-Lone-Star?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments