The Curse of Vecna

Posted on August 12, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Dave Hartlage
Self Published
5e
Levels 8-10

An 8-year-old child hands the party a note, which reads, “I poisoned my parents. I am a very wicked boy and I should hang.” He offers a reward for help waking his sleeping parents. This quest takes characters to a dungeon under a ruined estate to break a curse Vecna put on the feuding family that served him. This adventure combines unforgettable roleplaying scenes, a dungeon to explore, and secrets to unravel.

This seventeen page adventure features a dungeon with 23 rooms. It’s got some decent ideas, here and there. It’s also trying WAYYYYY too hard on the formatting front, which ends up making it confusing. And the descriptions are less than stellar. It’s promise ends up being mostly a one trick pony.

That intro is pretty good, eh? “I poisoned my parents, I am a very wicked boy and I should hang.” That’s pretty fucking sweet, man, as a fucking hook or inciting event or whatever. That shit is irresistible! Warms my  jaded heart. I’m fucking in, man! And we’ve got deputy dickhead batting the kid away, while asshole sherif is hiring you to find a stolen book. Both asshats, acting like asshats, and this fucking kid is there. It’s quite good. 

Fucking eight year old in D&D-landian writing a note? No way. His friend gave it to him. Turns out it’s a boggle who has set the illiterate kid up.  Funny looking boy who lives in the ruined chapel. Turns out it’s a boggle who has set the illiterate kid up. His idea of a joke. Fucking awesome man! The first kid has a little sister. She’s hungry. If you give her food then she doesn’t eat it all. “We should save some for the hungry people int the basement” or some words to that effect … oh man! Can you imagine?! The players should be LOSING. THEIR. SHIT. about now. 

Oh, oh, that sheriff? That hires you to find the book? Here’s his opinion on the local ruler, the one who killed her entire family to take power, the legend says: “Salis smiles in admiration and says, “That’s how a strong ruler shows strength and keeps stability. Show me a king called ‘the good’ or ‘the pious,’ and I’ll show you people beset by invasion and civil war. Lady Vis- cec showed the price of unrest, and so she ruled over peace and prosperity.” Fucking wonderful man! Fucking wonderful!

The boggle, and book for that matter, are in room one of the dungeon. Everything before room two is great. I fucking love  it. The inciting event. The sheriff. The deputy. The kids. The bogle. Fucking great. Then the dungeon starts and shit goes downhill fast. Basically, you go to the nearly-the-last room and fight The Skull Lord and and a couple of undead. Along the way you can pierce together a puzzle, of how Lady Despot killed her siblings, and do things like put the right head on the right body to have that body tell you a secret. Which  is something like “watch out for the floor in the last room when you are fighting the big bad.” IE: some hint to that boss fight. There’s really not much more going on than that. 

Along the way we get fine rooms like room eleven. “Salon” “This room is empty” That’s if you’re on the material plane. If you’re on the Shadowfell then its “This room contains comfortable chairs and empty bookshelves.” Great. I am inspired. I love my life. IE: the room descriptions are some combination of non -existent and joyless. And the entire thing is a fucking mess with formatting. Traditional black font. And red font. And blue font. And line section separator. And italics read-aloud. In ref. I get it. Your heart is in the right place man, but execution is lacking. The material plane/shadowfell thing, requiring a couple of descriptions for each room, doesn’t help AT ALL. 

And, you know, there’s this over explanation of things. Like every little thing has to be justified, or explained to the DM in detail. “The deputy is acting like this because …” Nah, find some other way to get the point across. “Ingratiating/blllied” does it in two words. 

Fixing the formatting crap would make this an ok short adventure. Nothing special. Just, like, one of those side-trek things from the Old Dungeon mags. It’s really too bad. It started so strong before falling in to its “solve the riddle!” shit.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see that intro/inciting event, and you can start to get an idea of the formatting issues. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/441084/Curse-of-Vecna?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 8 Comments

Hounds of Hendenburgh

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Liam Padraig o Cuilleanain
Self Published
Cairn
Low Levels

Terror roams the dark and brambled paths of the Kryptwood. A pack of giant spectral hounds rule the night, savaging those foolish enough to brave the forest. The villagers of Hendenburgh cower in the shadows of the ancient boughs as each morning heralds a newly savaged corpse.

This 22 page adventure presents a delightful little romp through a colourful town, a dreadful forest, and a small haunted dungeon/crypt. Would that everything I reviewed were at least this good. A credit to county Donegal!

Ok Liam, I’ll strike you a deal. I’ll give this one a pretty good review and in return you don’t roast me for not including the fifteen different accent marks in your name. 

We got a small village. Folk inside it are being attacked by ghostly hounds. Oliver the poacher took out a mob to the forest to hunt them down, and  they killed a few, but the mob got seriously fucked up. Hola bitches; it’s time for you, the party, to show up and fix things. Or, so it seems. What we have here is something quite interesting: the adventure is not the adventure. The ghost hound thing, while a real situation, are but one of things going on. They are, essentially, a pretext, with the rest of the excitement of the adventure coming from the townfolk and others hanging around. And it is magnificent. Simple, but engaging enough situations to add complications and shit to any  adventure that party might want to head in to.

Let’s see, the local lord is ancient and senile. But, he got an “inappropriately young wife.”  That’s fun! Both singularly and in combination with each other! And, also, she’s  “a student of the new learning who regards reports of the ghostly hounds as mere peasant superstition. She attributes the savaged bodies found in the woods to the work of a particularly vindictive badger.” Great! And, Oliver the Poacher, who’s ready with a posse of the three Winstaple sons, Gregory the Blacksmith, and five village toughs in case the party throws around too much weight. A fuckingpoacher man! And “the Winstample boys.” Fyuck yeah. That’s how you add specificity. That’s how you make a situation. The pastor, who could banish the ghosts, is a hoot. He’s a heretic. The villagers informed on him and he was punished by the bishop. He’s fucking bitter as all fuck. And a drunk, making his own wiskey. Convince him to help them and load him up with grain alcohol! (And, at the end, the villagers love him, turn to his heresy … only to have the bishop send in the inquisition, eventually. Sweet!”) The miller is sad, his wife is gone. I guess the hounds killed her. Turns out shes left him and moved in with the local bandit leader. He’s Sly Willy, with his men. More bluster than ability, but he DOES have a lot of men. Also, he reneged on a deal to marry one of the three crones that live in the woods. I didn’t mention them? How about “Naked apart from the cloud of flies that cling to her old leathery flesh” or “Eyeless crone who wears a tattered black leather cap and robes sewn from seaweed and taut human flesh.” Great! Perfect! Three’s about six or so more townspeople/things in the woods that you can deal with, including the ghost dude in charge of the hounds. Just break the circle around his tombs dn he’ll fuck off along with his dogs. And he’s a man of his word! There’s SO. MUCH. going on here. And it’s never overpowering. It’s never so much you can’t handle it. It’s all delightful, terse, and sets up a great situation for the party to handle. You’ve got lots of paths to weave your way through this little area and whats going on. There’s no assumed solution, although there are notes to help with the most common ones. 

This is all fucking great. The designer has a knack for these situations, human nature, and a terse but evocative description. Treasure is well-enough described, just a couple of extra words. Like a gold wedding band or a gem-encrusted jewelry box. All told, you get nine hexes described (and about nine more empty), with one of them being the town and another the main dungeon/crypt of nine rooms. 

I’m a pretty ig fan of this. But it could be better. Maybe a one pager with the major NPC’s on it. And, at heart, beyond the townfolk shit, this is a horror adventure. It’s fucking ghost hounds in the woods attacking folk and a crypt at the end. It should feel scary. And while the descriptions and the ilk tend to lean a little in that direction, it doesn’t really push that theming very far. A few extra notes … a little bit of a lingering phrase to help bring home the dread and anxiety would have helped quite a bit. You want to keep that theme going int he adventure, after introducing it, instead of it just coming out as a hack. And the designer could have done more to help bring this forward, especially for the DM. There’s nothing to stop the DM, and even some theming to help, but it really just needs more in this area. 

Big fan though. Looks like this is his only adventure?

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. And with a sixteen page preview, you can see more than enough of the adventure. Nice job.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/444913/Hounds-of-Hendenburgh?1892600

Posted in Reviews, The Best | 155 Comments

The Elixir

Posted on August 7, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Jean-Claude Tremblay
Le Paysagiste de l’Imaginaire
Cairn 
Low Levels

The village of Termiluth is the largest producer of giant blueberries, also called ”Varanox berries” from the name of the famous wizard-botanist who created this variety of small fruits. Unfortunately this season, no flowers appeared in the fruit bushes. Strangely, the water in the pond used to water the plants turned yellow just before flowering, which may have prevented the flowers from appearing? One of the villagers was sent to bring offerings to the water fairy at the shrine in the forest, but the water fairy had disappeared. Panic begins to invade the population. Will the adventurers be able to help the village? Only them can tell…

This 28 page digest adventure has a cave with eight rooms and two wilderness encounters. It contains the phrase “they attack!” over 183 times, with no interactivity beyond that. Also, it’s written at a first grade level. Also, I fucking hate this fucking shit. 

I do love an adventure by our foreign friends. [Where foreign is defined as not the cultural center of the universe. ‘Merica! Fuck Yeah!] I tend to enjoy the freshness they bring to their adventures and the reliance on a different cultural heritage to bring something new to the table. This is, of course, a romanticized view of the situation. In reality our foreign friends produce crap, just like everyone else does. On to todays review of an adventure which is published in both English and French!

You roll up in town, find out the blueberries are not flowering, and get hired on to go find out why and get the local water nymph to bless the suddenly yellow water in town. Ohs nos! Mushroom people at the fairy pond! They attack! Let’s follow their trail. Look, it cross a bridge with a troll. It attacks! We then continue to a cave, full of mushroom people. They attack! Yeah, we saved the princess from Bowser and can go home. I assure you, this is the entirety of the adventure. 

How does it take 28 pages to do this Well, pages eight through eleven describe the town of eleven locations. We get boring mundane descriptions written for a first grade reading level. “What would become of all the farmers in the village if Aldir the blacksmith wasn’t there to make and repair the tools needed to grow giant blueberries? He’s also good at repairing weapons and armor!” Seriously. That’s the entry for the blacksmith. The entire entry. No embellishment or cherry picking of phrasings from me. That’s it. I don’t even know what style that is … Joycian? Entry after entry of shit like that. Nothing to add to the adventure. 

There is one good entry. “Upon arriving at the shrine, strange fungal creatures (6) jump and dance around the central pond that served as the water fairy’s refuge.” Not enough jumping and dancing of mushroom people in adventures, so that’s good to see. But EVERYTHING else is just simplistic wording that ends with a “They attack!” Nothing else. No exploration. No decisions. Just fighting mushroom people … and one troll. “The bridge troll is colluding with the mushroom people. His goal is to not let anyone cross the bridge.”

Your reward for defeating a troll? A sword, a helmet, a shield, two days of rations and 67gp. Rejoice D&D players, everywhere, you have hit the mother load!

Why people write this sort of thing I will never know, I guess. Watching the paint dry or playing a story game seems more enjoyable. Also, there is no elixir. 🙁

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1. There’s no preview, but hey, download it and see. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/442732/The-Elixir—LElixir?1892600

Posted in My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Reviews | 16 Comments

Legacy of Blackscale Lagoon

Posted on August 5, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Peter Spahn
Mythmere Games
S&W
Levels 1-3

What starts out as an ordinary venture into the backwater (and very watery) swamps of Blackscale Valley turns into a complex mystery about the events that took place in the Valley about a hundred years ago. Not everything is what it appears to be, and peril awaits the characters at every turn!

This 24 page adventure details a small wilderness region with six locations, two of which have around a nine-room dungeon each. It’s not a disaster, by normal standards of the industry. But by OSR standards … I have a hard time imagining how it got to the way it is. Long and … meh?

This feels so much like a converted adventure, in terms of the plot. Lizardmen worship a dead dragon and they subjugate some goblins to act act their hench, raiding a village to try and find the dragons egg. That’s right out of a dozen or more modern era adventures. So much of this feels like a modern era adventure … and I don’t mean a conversion. It’s weird to see Spahn and Finch on this as the primary designer and editor. It looks like it’s being advertised as “the new B2!” and is some kind of add on, I guess, to a S&W kickstarter? That makes sense. I was surprised to see something from Mythmere and it makes sense that this is just a throw-away thing tacked on to a kickstarter, given the quality.

You start with a quarter page read-aloud and then get attacked by goblins and a lizardman. If someone in your group dies then the town guard shows up to drive the attackers off. These are not good portents for the future of the adventure.

The town has a couple of good hirelings to grab; short entries with just a sentence to describe a really good hook for them. “Tends to invade personal space and look people in the eye too long” or Slick Jimmy the halfling “. Slick Jimmy is arrogant, glib, but surprisingly cautious. Loves to play dice.” This is exactly what you want in a an NPC description. It’s terse and leaves out all of the eye colour bullshit that tends to plague descriptions. You get a description instead that allows the DM to riff on it and being the person to life. You immediately know what to do with them to run them. This is perfect for an NPC and, in spirit, is exactly also what you want in a room descriptions. You want something easy to scan that implants itself in your head immediately and allows you to riff away on it easily. Otherwise, the town, is a problem. And serves as an example for the rest of the adventure.

If we look at the general store in town we can get a good idea of what is going on.  It is just about a column of text. And that text tells you that it is the usual general store. There is nothing special about this place. The chick in charge doesn’t have anything special about her. There’s no hook to pick up. There’s nothing interesting at all about it. But it takes nearly a column to describe that. What is the purpose of this? It feels like something I haven’t mentioned in quite some time: pay per word. The padding out of an entry just to fill space. The other entries are similar. I should note that the parties reward to investigating the goblin/lizardmen attacks are 100 gp each … even though the dude offering doesn’t have but 164gp in his loot box. That’s not very “loot the B2 Keep”, but, then again … the main cleric dude sends you off on this quest … only to attack you when you return. You see he’s got a dragon egg hes hiding. Which means you face a newborn dragon, a L3 cleric, and 2d4 militia when you return to town, in a chaotic battle scene. I like the concept here, if not the execution.

The encounters, some of them, have a littl bit of something different to them, here and there. There’s a ruined tower, partially collapsed, the lower floor with some standing water … and a giant leech. That’s not something you see every day. The entry if far, far too long for its providing, as it is with all of the encounters in this. But, also, it’s nice to see something other than the usual giant spider attack … even if there ARE stirge later on. Otherwise we’re not looking at anything very interesting. Fight some goblins and fight some lizardmen and avoid the collapsing rubble. 

The formatting is not the strong point here. It’s almost time for GenCOn, and I bought a couple of adventures at genCon last year that I still haven’t reviewed. These are for systems other than D&D. There’s this thing that happens where someone gets some money and publishes a new system. You know, all hardback with a lot of art and glossy pages with full background images. And then they publish an adventure or two for it. And they all look the same. Some section headings and not much formatting beyond that. Long stretches of paragraph blocks with almost nothing breaking it up. This is disastrous for running an adventure. You can’t find anything and you have the pause the game for long sections of time while you absorb the information … only to learn that there is nothing really interesting or interactive going on in the room.

We do, however, get a short boxed section on the morality of killing lizard men babies, a reference to the killing of children from Henry V. Absolved, I find three, orc baby killer! 

I shall finish by noting that this has two four star reviews on DriveThru … a more serious critique could not be given. The adventure is quite disappointing. I was excited to see something from Mythmetre and Spahn. But, for whatever reason, they seem to have forgotten everything about OSR adventures. Or, they are taking things to the next level by emulating the glossy big product drops of those third-party systems/games I referenced earlier. 

This is $8 at DriveThru. There is no preview. For shame!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/446307/Legacy-of-Blackscale-Lagoon?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 27 Comments

The Tomb of the Sand Sorcerer

Posted on August 2, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Lewis McMeekin
Mucker71
OSR
Levels 1-3

In ancient ages past, the high sorcerers of the endless deserts ruled with mighty magics and fiendish spells. As time went on and their empire fell to infighting, demonic influences and wayward spells, each subsequent sorcerer king and his fellows grew weaker and weaker, until finally a rebellion crush

This eight page adventure have a tomb with eight rooms. It’s garbage. 

Okok, yeah yeah, it’s garbage. But, get this, it’s Levels one through three, right? Yeah yeah, but, get this: it’s got EIGHT mummies and a lich in those eight rooms! I know, right? But, you see, that’s click bait, from me. The mummies are AC7 HP4. With an init of -3! They are zombies! So, you know, pretty interesting to put some zombies in mummy wrappings. (And give them a penalty to attack while wrapped up) Anyway, I thought it was cool. My “this is my tomb and I’m the sand sorcerer and I’m a lich now” is a different story.

There’s a central chamber to the dungeon with the other eight rooms hanging off of it. I’m not actually sure where you enter the dungeon. There’s some puzzle thing outside that you have to solve and then stairs appear in the earth, a kind of ramp. There’s this black semicircle on the central room in the dungeon, so, maybethat’s the ramp? I don’t know. Anyway, you go in to all of the eight rooms. Ones got the mummies in it. Otherwise, you just loot the rooms of a couple of boring treasures. Then, once you do all eight, and come back to the central chamber, the sarcophagus lid (magically sealed, of course) pops off the sarcophagus in it and Mr Lich appears. Or, rather, mr lich, lower case. AC14 and HP30. If he defeats the party then leaves his tomb and seeks to restart his empire. With his one spell “sand blast” and the ability to hover. Oh, and he drains 1 HP from each person in a small radius. Anyway, he’s restarting his empire. With AC14 and 30 HP. And one spell. I mean, sure, restart your empire my man. Until you run across a group of kids that throw rotten apples at you and you then die. But, also, who am I to shit on someones dreams? 

As for the rest of this … the map is uninteresting. These sorts of things are just “Have an encounter have an encounter have an encounter” Lame. Why have a map if there’s nothing to do on it? No exploration? [Ed: Because Byrce will slam you if you don’t.] No real interactivity here. The Get In puzzle and then the mummy and lich fight. No other real puzzles or things to do besides loot a bit. 

But there is TONS of text. Looooong sections of boxed text… yeah! It’s been awhile since that particular vice has shown up. And long DM’s text. That says nothing. Well, besides historical backstory that is meaningless. And the text there is contains overwrought text. “The

fabric, once vibrant and regal, is now weathered and worn, covered in layers of fine desert sand that cling to its every thread.”

*barf*

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $2.62. The preview is four pages and show you only the outside puzzle. Garbage preview. Garbage adventure.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/444478/TOROHA–The-Tomb-of-the-Sand-Sorcerer?1892600

Also, congrats to Kelsey! I revisited DriveThru after an absence and saw a TON of new adventures in the OSR section … 95% of which were Shadowdark! I mean, I LOATHE the fact that they are there, but, also Shadowdark is the new hotness for sure. Congrats!

Posted in 2 out of 10, Reviews | 10 Comments

GenCon

Posted on August 1, 2023 by Bryce Lynch

Going to GenCon?

Drop me a line

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Tomb of the Twice-Crowned King

Posted on July 31, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By G. Hawkins
Self Published
OSRIC
Levels 8-10

When death finally drew near and the forces of law were at the gates, Heimfell the giant two-headed king built a great tomb in the hills. He ordered his sorcerers to place a curse upon his family and servants, forcing them into a state of unlife to guard his crypt for eternity. Many treasure seekers have died within his halls and to this day the two-headed king is still lord of his final domain

This twelve page adventure features a two level dungeon with about 55 rooms. It’s varied, interesting, and not quite as static as most tomb adventures. It’s a good dungeon, suffering only from a lack of evocative writing, and, perhaps, just a tiny touch of the The Tomb Problem.

This is part of a compendium of adventures. About fifty pages with nine adventures included. Which, doing a quick thumb through, appear to be decent adventures.This one, though, is a two level tomb dungeon housing the skeleton of a giant two-headed king of old. And his undead buddies. And some static shit. And a decent number of traps. IE: What one expects from a tomb adventure. The level here is a bit suspect. Ye Olde Cleric will be getting a workout calling on his god to wash that undead right out of their hair. Chock full of nuts, and undead … with the second level of the tomb having a -2 to turn attempts. Nice try buddy, but eights and tens are still gonna fuck up some undead, I think? Meh, it’s just a resource, like anything else, I guess. 

A lot of what’s going on in this tomb is going to be familiar. You enter a room, it’s got a sarcophagus, and inside is a clawing sound and a moaning female voice saying “let me out, help, let me out.” A wight. Or, Ye Olde Niches With Skeletons In Them. This extends, even, to the classic statue trap/puzzle, of which there are several present. Statue with gemstone eyes, a hand raised in warning, eyes begin to glow and then shoot disintegration beams. These are all classics. Up to and including bridges over chasms and a giant stone rolling ball trap. The classics are present, both in trap form and in creature form. The adventure does a decent job with them. Take that wight encounter. The scratching and the female Help Me (Daphne?!) sound help set this apart. It’s not just a sarcophagus with a wight inside, but the sounds, and lure from them, help to amplify the encounter just a little bit more. 

You could have a room with a wight. Or a room with a sarcophagus and a wight inside, which is better. Or, Make the sarcophagus stone. Or, how about white-streaked black marble. Stick in some tattered tapestries of a stern faced elderly woman. Make them tattered and decayed. Finally, add the scratching at the lid and the Help Me. We;ve gone from a minimalist encounter, a wight, through some other versions to arrive at an encounter that has a smattering of evocative text and has something active going on, the scratching and voice. It’s now closer to a situation and infinitely more interesting than just a boring old sarcophagus with a wight inside. 

And the designer does this, over and over again. “Two 12’ tall bronze statues, two-headed and

holding giant mauls, flank a crumbling stone bridge (60’ long) arching over a canyon. Below, a raging river fed by a thundering waterfall cuts through the black rock; on the other side a ledge before thick, granite doors embedded into a cliff face. The cavern ceiling towers above (200′ high)” That’s pretty good scene setting, but, also … wonder what’s gonna happen with those giant statues carrying mauls … you know, the ones next to the crumbling stone bridge… 

Formatting is great. The maps are clear and interesting, one has an iso view. Different elevations present, rivers, statues, etc. And the text is clear and easy to read. Seriously, this is one of the easiest to read things I’ve ever seen. So much so that I hazard to say that any other font/spacing should be illegal. Bold room names (which, perhaps, could be a bit more descriptive) followed by a short little descriptive paragraph, keywords bolded and expanded upon in bullets below, with brief uses of italics and shaded boxes for more clarity.Nine rooms per page, on the first page, and they feel good. Each room is clearly separated from the rest, good use of whitespace to shift attention. I seriously can’t give it enough praise, especially in the layout/font category. 

That bridge entry is, perhaps, a highlight of the evocative writing in the adventure. It’s not that any of the rooms are bad, but, it does get that “Just another marble tomb room” vibe to it after awhile. How many marble sarcophaguses can you do in a dungeon? But, when there is something more colourful to describe it generally gets a decent enough treatment. Magic items/treasure could be better described, but, I guess that’s the nature of this particular beast. 

So, it’s a solid dungeoncrawl in a two level tomb. More than good enough to challenge the players. I might say tha the interactivity is a bit low/slow, as is similar in a lot of tomb adventures, but it’s not exactly the static place that most tombs are.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is eleven pages and shows you several rooms. It’s a good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/442331/Tomb-of-the-TwiceCrowned-King?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 9, Reviews, The Best | 17 Comments

Skalbak Sneer The Stronghold of Snow

Posted on July 29, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By J Blasso-Gieseke
No Artpunk #2
OSE
Levels 5-7

Skalbak Sneer, the Stronghold of Snow, is located in the foothills of the Blackcrag Mountains. It is the northernmost defensive outpost of the snow dwarf realm developed eight generations ago by King Thazkal to remove pressure from the mighty halls of their central mountain hold, the vast Undercastle, Khazal Kharak. . The Stronghold was designed as a deathtrap, requiring few

dwarves to garrison. By way of rumors bruited about by dwarf ore merchants, the legend of the

wealth it contains ensures a steady influx of the foolish: parties of adventurers, greedy barbarians, and raiding bands of orcs and other savage beastmen — all test their mettle to steal its riches, never to return. The Stronghold is now under the stewardship of the eighth Skalbakson, Thulmir.

This thirty page adventure is a dwarf base, full of treasure, with about sixty rooms. It’s a straight up no-gimp lair assault. I can pick at it, for what it is and how it does things, but, also, it knows what it is and it does its job. 

The snow dwarves have a fortress on top of a mountain. There’s no reason for it to be there. It’s not guarding a route in to their lands, or a passage to the underworld, and it can serve as a sally point. But we’re gonna ignore all of the real reasons to put a fortress up someplace. It’s chock full of cash and magic. And that means XP. Lets go fuck up some dwarves! The hooks, as well as the hirelings mentioned, all kind of lead you toward this. Some have rumours, some have bits of the map. It’s all oriented toward the task at hand: getting in, killing dwarves, and looting the place. 

First you gotta climb up some stairs on the outside of the fortress to get to the mountain entrance, four hours up. Griffins make it harder. Then, inside, you’re stuck in a kind of series of looping passages, where the dwarves use the numerous murder holes to stab and shoot at the party, as well as opening some monster cages to set them loose on the party in certain rooms. The main task for the party is to act like a bunch of level sevens and not n00bs. Don’t play the dwarves games. Don’t go for the main entrance but look for the hidden ones. Get your ass passwall’d (or something) behind them and out of the main murder-hole/cage loop . Don’t play the DM’s game but rather be the free thinks that got you to level seven in the first place. There’s a good order of battle here, with various reactions of the dwarves to the party and plans to fall back, etc. And the little shits have a kind of doomsday device: when the place is ready to fall and you’ve slaughtered almost everyone they release the wights of the former fortress commanders to cleanse the place. (I’m not so sure about this … I seem to recall clerics fucking up wights at this level. The different games all tend to handle turns differently though, so maybe the fact that this is OSE prevents too many of them getting cleric’d?) 

Descriptions are a little boring. The rooms are a bit sparse, a combination of The Dwarf Problem and needing to make whats there a bit more. It’s a concentration on factual room descriptions, the contents, rather than what the room feels like. It’s not bad, it’s just not great. Formatting is decent. Lots of headings and bolding and so on. The rooms do tend to run a little long for what they are, I think. I’m looking at you, Mr. Kitchen, as an example. Perhaps an emphasis on descriptions everything in a separate heading instead of leaving some stuff alone and just moving on, covering the more interesting bits and letting the doors and drab gray curtain exist without more detail. Now that we’ve got formatting down, lets pull back and use it appropriately. 

The challenges/interactivity is ok, for what this is. I mean, it’s a lair assault. You’re stabbing things. The main loop should confound the players and, hopefully, they “imaginative play” around it. And, you can see one of the treasure rooms almost immediately, giving that tantalus effect to keep people moving and interested. The multiple entrances, all but one hidden, help as well. But, once inside, you’re mostly just fucking dudes up and it’s the order of battle and the DM running a large and long battle sequence.

There’s not much support (none) in the way of trickery and diplomacy for the fortress so that’s up to the DM. And that map. Man. It’s wonderful and terrible both. Lots of detail on it, maybe too much for the scale provided. And the color coding gets a bit heavy in places. It sure is useful though. I suspect that a two page map or some such would have helped quite a bit.

As a hack, this is not a bad adventure. Not my thing, but, hey, dig in if you want to stab things.

https://princeofnothing.itch.io/no-artpunk-ii

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | 10 Comments

Alchymystyk Hoosegow

Posted on July 26, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Alex Zisch
No Artpunk #2
AD&D
Level 7

Legend says an aristocrat once kidnapped an alchemist and held him captive hoping to create untold fortunes and wonders for the noble’s domain alone. If the secret of turning base metals into gold was found surely treasures and magic can be discovered in the archaic prison.

This twenty page adventure details a multi-level dungeon with … fifty rooms? It’s got a … richness to it, a degree of depth that is seldom seen. And it comes off in many places as notes,  or ideas for an adventure rather than an adventure. Until the last level of the dungeon is reached, where things chill out to a “normal” dungeon crawl.

The overland portion of this adventure is weird. There isn’t one. But, the multi-level nature of the dungeon kind of acts like one. You’ve got this plateau, with a tower, mine, and sewer pipe. Picking one can get you in to the main dungeon. After you travel through what I might call a mini-level. And it is these mini-levels and the tower/mine/shaft thing that I’m going to do the majority of my bitching. Once we hit the “main” level then things change. 

These mini-levels/locations are quite strange. First, it’s kind of a neato idea. Placing the main level under or behind a couple of loosy goosy locations that you pass on the way to it. Very D1. But, in this, implemented  kind of terribly. They are almost outlined instead of described. And, I think, that’s not the way to do this. Let’s look at the mines.

We’ve got a small map with maybe six-ish rooms on it, four keyed, with a lot of hallway/”mine tunnels” between them. This, alone, stands in contract to the 35 rooms on the main level. Then, we’ve got one room described as the “orc camp.” You see, there are thirty orc miners and a couple of supervisors. “Off duty orcs congregate here. Ten sleep while ten eat and gamble at a fire.” There’s a sentence about the casserole they cook and one about shovels scattered about, before a one sentence treasure description. More of a general idea, or an outline or the pre-adventure and what could appen than the main adventure encounter descriptions that we are sussed to seeing. Sure, there’s a couple of paragraphs in the “intro” to this level that describe the orcs a little more, their motivations and how they act, but, again, at quite the high level. The sounds of work and what happens is up to the DM to bring to the table. Which, to a certain extent is fine in an adventure, but, here underground, I would have expected something a little more akin to a traditional keying rather than a D1 type merchant caravan listing. And we get maybe four or five of these “sub level” locations. Very loose. The mines, for example, imply that the orc miners are dumping tailings outside, but there’s nothing on the plateau description to help with this. Detail about the exterior of the mines in is in the interior of the mines. And I’m still not the fuck sure where the fuck that sewer pipe goes. It’s all a jumbled fucking mess of text. Both too short and too long and badly formatted to aid in comprehension.

But all of this changes once we’re on the main level. Things chill out and you get a dungeon that looks and feels like a “normal” adventure. Some descriptions are a tad long, with four or so paragraphs not being unusual. But, also, this is mostly due to the complexity of the rooms. It manages it 35ish rooms in about seven pages, so it’s generally keeping things to a paragraph or so. This provides an interesting mix. For each “mundane” room, still choked full of lab shit (this is an alchemist level) you will then get one in which things could/can go south. The very first room on the level has three 3 foot tall humanoids floating in their own beakers, all weakening oversized rings on their fingers … each glowing blue. A great invitation to fuck around and find out, eh? Tempting the players is always a sign of a good adventure. I think we’re looking at about seven creature encounters on this level, not counting wanderers, and about the same number of puzzle like things or specials or whatever. Not really situations and, in spite of the theming in each, maybe a little disconnected, feeling like separate encounters. 

Descriptions are decent in the dungeon. That first room is pretty good, and “Plucked giant cranes hang from hooks. Barrels contain white wine, smoked hare meat, dried persimmons, pickled tomatoes and salted dwarf bits. “ is nothing to slouch at, to mix sayings 😉

I’m not unhappy with this. But, also, I think it suffers as a part of ts origin story. Given some more time to work it, the dungeon encounters, the locales before the main dungeon level and so on, I thin it could have turned in to something rather decent.

https://princeofnothing.itch.io/no-artpunk-ii

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | Leave a comment

No Art Punks

Posted on July 24, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 

By Peter Mullen
No Artpunk #3
AD&
Levels 4-6

The wanted Poster hung outside the Village trading post and fish market door by the town deputy confirms the identity of that bearded Vagabond you saw rowing into the Sea Cave just south of town four days ago. More importantly, it states that Darvel the Dashing is worth 5000 GP* Dead or Alive!

This fourteen page dungeon has about 43 rooms in a vaguely sea save environment. A straightup dungeon with no pretense, it’s encounters go the extra mile to add just that little bit more that keeps the entries short but with extra flavour. And a delightfully painful map to use with no real evocative descriptions. A dungeons dungeon.

Man, the map on this one. It’s wonderful and painful at the same time. Some kind of hand-drawn isometric that looks machine drawn. Like some mobius puzzle full of rooms, halls, and rivers. And then with light pencil marks on it to indicate the room numbers, barely visible. And then it looks like someone took a photo of it on their phone, after folding it up like a real map, so creases added to it. (Which are actually the pages … it’s done over eight 11×8 pages and “taped” together, it looks like.) It’s fucking great. Lots of branches, lots of variety in elevation and terrain. And I have no fucking idea at all how you would EVER be able to look at it during play. Formatting it single column, which, while I’m not a fan of, the shorter entries for the room keys keeps thing generally manageable … although double column still would have worked better. (You can read some scholarly articles about the eye traveling longer distances over single column and its impacts.) And the rooms descriptions, in terms of evocative writing, are generally not present. “This larger cave has a stalagmite and stalactite curtain wall to the south end.” It basically has very little to no descriptions of the actual room environments. You’re on your own buddy.

But the rest is pretty chill.

Ain’t a lot of fucking around with this one. It’s just a dungeon and it stays focused on being a dungeon, to its credit. We get a page of complications, in the form of others also entering the dungeon for various reasons … including some suspect potential hirelings. And then there’s a page or so of wanderers to keep you on your toes, The stirge sit on stalactites, the fire beetles eat algae form the walls. It’s not much, but its doing ok in my book. Maybe a bit heavy on the “lying in wait” for some entries, but it’s got that few extra words to help get the DM juices going during the wanderer encounter. Which is what the extra on the wanderers table should be doing. It doesn’t need a paragraph, just like in this adventure you just need a couple of extra words. The mermen-like dudes are cautiously exploring the dry caves in their bubble helmets. Great!

The actual encounters here are pretty focused. You get maybe two or three sentences per encounter, for the most part, with a few going on for a paragraph or so. 

What sets this apart though it the extra bit that is added on to each encounter. There’s this larger for the bugbears. “The sub-chief and two helpers are selecting a barrel of ale to roll out to their crew.” Or, on a ledge of stone gargoyles, if you drop them in to the water they r-hydrate to be the mermen-like dudes they always were. A room has a giant stone face in it, a shadow hiding the nostril to stalk the party until they are weakened. And, if you crawl through a nose, being the correct size to do so, you get somewhere else. It’s just that little bit more to an otherwise mostly minimally keyed (or minimally adjacent) adventure. It is, essentially, the same thing Gygax did in his better moments in B2 and G1. The orcs playing knucklebones or the Bree-yark shit. Just a little bit more to help get the DM going for the encounter. It adds a whole lotta life, beyond a true minimally keying, without having to go on and on and on. It sets up a SITUATION, which is so much better than an encounter, without it being a set piece. And that’s what you want. A situation that you can grok quickly during play. You can glance at the text to run the room immediately AND it inspires you to run something fun. When it’s done well, anyway.

The longer encounters tend to have someone or something you can talk to, hence their longer nature. An ogre running a rat kabob thing, grilling them. And he does a good job! Or a leprechaun running a con, the way leprechauns should. And, a talking spider, willing to let go with some of his information, the sly old devil. You didn’t REALLY need that halfling that’s with you, did you?

This is a straight up dungeon. It would not be out of place as a level in The Darkness Beneath, as one of the better levels. And I don’t know how I can give higher praise than comparing someone to David Bowman. Yeah, yeah, the room descriptions are lacking, in their evocative nature, making this essentially a B2-like thing. And I might like a little bit more both with monster descriptions (again evocative) and treasure detail. But you can’t fault this thing for giving you that old school dungeon flavour … something that it, strangely, missing from the VAST majority of old school adventures. Which is as true today as it has been since the late 1e days. 

I can’t best this, especially with the map, but the fucking thing is close.

https://princeofnothing.itch.io/no-artpunk-ii

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | 26 Comments