By Ben Thompson
99c Adventures
B/x ... but really 5e.
Level 1
Look ma! An old school cover!
A daring escape from the clutches of Gnoll marauders liberates you from a life of brutal servitude, yet your struggle for survival continues… for now you find yourself alone and unarmed, beset by unseen horrors that lie in wait at every turn, with only your wits, your courage, and your strength to sustain you.
This 64 page adventure is shit. Everything about it. Read-aloud, DM text, linear, design. All shit.
First, it’s not a fucking PSR adventure. Putting “OSR” on the cover and including stats for B/X does not make your adventure an OSR adventure. The fucking game works differently, betweem PSR and 5e. Shit you can get away with in 5e,, like forced combat after forced combat, just does not fucking work in OSR. This is one of the reasons why linearity and plot tend to fail in OSR adventures. One of the first “scenes” is with two gnolls and two hyenas. That’s bad enough for a first fucking level party. But, then, the party has no weapons and no armor. What the fuck happened in playtesting? Oh, right, you didn’t do that.So, this is a 5e fucking adventure with the OSR label slapped on in the most shameless way in order to increase sales, I guess. Fucking bullshit money grab. I say it again. Write something because you love the game, not because you want some fucking money.
The opening read-aloud is a page long. Read-aloud in this is routinely long. DM text is even longer, with the most basic of encounters running a page in length. Seriously. A fucking SPIDER is a page long. A NORMAL spider, not a giant one. ONE spider. A page long. It’s fucking nuts.
“Force them to run: Some of you contemplate standing and fighting for a moment, but the overwhelming enemy response breaks your resolve and you decide to escape rather than perish.” It’s just a railroad. Moving from one scene to another. Except, during an overland journey. Then it turns random. Why? WHy then? This is certainly not the greatest of all sins that can be committed, but, if you’re writing a 5e adventure, a 5e scene adventure that is essentially a railroad, but switch to randomness then? Because you don’t understand the purpose of randomness. Just take one or three and flesh them out (to the appropriate degree) and stick them in, for a better experience. If you’re committed to a railroad plot then do a railroad plot.
It ends in the ruins of a castle. Where you meet a dragon. WHo sends you on a fetch quest under it to get a gem stolen by rats. Wererats, of course. At level one. Coming back you get to [pick an item each from its hoard. Very dragon like.
Overwritten to a point of extremes. A railroad from start to finish. This then is D&D.A suck ass review of a suck ass adventure. Is this really the vision you had when you set out to write?
This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages. Enjoy the opening read-aloud mess, along with the railroad of an escape and combats.
By Thomas Scoot Ingle
Thomas Scott Ingle Presents
LotFP
Level ?
From the Captain’s log: “Whatever profane scourge, horrid disease, foul magic, or pure evil has taken my crew, my ship, my life, it cannot be allowed to find its way ashore…! “I pray the gods sink this vessel, and the evil infecting her to the dark deep, and Mother Ocean take us all! For now, I’ve locked myself in my cabin with my last gallon of stout liquor, contemplating further on our dark situation, for I know not what else to do. May haps lady luck will visit, and this hard liquor will cause my death…” What happens when an adventure party stumbles upon Naval war vessel, lost for years, presumed sunken? Can they figure out what happened, or will they too fall to the horrid curse that destroyed the crew…?
This 32 page adventure describes the zombie apocalypse that is taking place on a boat. Designer Fiat combines with a mixed up DM text/read-aloud and Looooooooonnnnngggggg text runs to create one of the more confusing messes i’ve stumbled across in my ten years. Ok idea. Some decent imagery here and there. But a fucking mess.
You find a ship aground on the beach. You go on to it. Eventually the zombies wake up and attack you … after the ship has drifted back out to sea. Fight hordes of zombies.
I enjoy a good monster description. I think they help bring an adventure to life. “It’s a zombie” is boring. That could mean anything. I like a monster description that draws no conclusions, like “Zombie” and instead describes what you see, or sense. This is part of what helps keep the game from becoming stale. A good monster description keeps the wonder of D&D alive. “It’s an orc” *YAWN* “It’s a svelt oiled human, nude but for a loincloth, sporting the head of a pig.” NOICE! This does a thing or two with monster descriptions that I particularly enjoy. “[The bodies on the deck] are rotted to the point it looks like one would need a spatula to get them up. Or a flat shovel. Some of them have thin layers of mineral growths on their bones from repeated exposure to sea spray.” That’s pretty sweet, eh? That’s a description from before they get up to attack. Hours before they do that. And, it turns something that the party is used to getting gacked by, a dead body, in to something that seems inoffensive to them. They are not as much on guard. I’m always impressed when someone manages to describe a skeleton in a room in a way that I, as a player, would not immediately destroy it for fear of it coming alive. And don’t get me started on statues … Anyway, good zombie/body description in this one.
But the rest of this is terrible to a degree I don’t usually see in the adventures I review.
Read-aloud! Second person read-aloud! Oh, my favorite! “The salty spray of the sea kisses your faces, the icy wind freezing it, as you trek along, near the coastline.” And the fucking adventure is FULL of it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many second-person descriptions in any adventure before this. It is, of course, purple, because otherwise why the fuck does someone use second person. And, even better, it’s mixed in with the DM text. Like, it will have a second-person read-aloudish thing and then immediately launch in to the DM text. There’s absolutely no indication, at all, where one stops and the next begins. You’ll be in a second-person description and then encounter “It only appears someone’s waving from the crow’s nest, but one can’t tell, until they climb up for a firsthand look, which requires boarding the vessel.” It’s absolutely insane. Switching, back and forth, with little rhyme or reason.
Did I mention the descriptions are LOOOONGGGG? Like, at least a column, and those are few and far between. We’re looking at page long descriptions here. Page a half in some cases. How the fuck are you supposed to run a page a half description of room, with no formatting other than a paragraph break. Yup, it’s paragraph style. Not quite wall of text, more novelization.
If you try to get off the ship you get eaten. Yup. Designer fiat. If you notice the ship drifting out to sea and try to jump off then your character is immediately eaten. That’s wonderful. Play the fucking adventure the way the dude wants you to or fuck you.
The artifact on board, causing the dead to rise (classic bite zombie infection style) is located “[at] Referee/Gm’s choice”. Great. And the zombies, proper? How about a headshot?! “their headless body will still attack, though at a Referee/Gm determined penalty.” It’s the fucking designers job to handle this shit. It’s their job to come up with that penalty and describe it and playtest it and make sure it fucking works. That’s part of what the fuck I’m paying for (in time, if not money) when I get an adventure. But, no.
And, let’s talk about the dead rising. A lot of the rooms, especially the initial ones, have a percentage chance that a certain action, most something causing noise, will cause the dead to rise. But, the party doesn’t know this. They will continue from room to room, causing noise, not knowing that this will trigger the undead attack.; There is no tension here. If the party doesn’t KNOW they are taking a chance then there is no tension around that chance. Sure, you can just attach a percentage for the undead waking up in each room. But let us not kid ourselves that is anything more than pure randomness. Why not just roll ahead of time, when writing the adventure, and making the zombies rise in that room, as you are writing it? It has the same effect.
Badly designed. Badly formatted. Impossible to wade through the text. It’s got nothing. But, also, the rare Two out of Ten!
This is $5.50 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages. The last two show a couple of the shorter rooms descriptions, up front. So, only a column or so. But, illustrates the other points well. SO, A good preview.
By Eric Hoffman
Castellan Publishing
OSE
Levels 1-5
For as long as anyone can remember, the strange hedge square has stood just outside your small town. It is large, thick and seemingly impenetrable. A curiosity to be sure, but one that the locals have gotten used to ignoring. That is, until recently! The hedge doesn’t seem so thick anymore, small gaps can be seen in the verdant wall. And even stranger, a corner has opened up! An imposing iron gate now stands where only a sharp corner of thicket used to be. Inside, a heavy fog obscures much past the entrance but marble buildings of ancient design can clearly be seen! Such buildings from a long lost civilization have been known to contain fabulous treasures, and even better, wondrous magics!
This 36 page adventure details a maze using dungeon geomorphs; about ten geomorphs with about seven or so encounters per geomorph. It’s inoffensive, and makes good use of its selected format, but lacks both depth and the evocative descriptions I’m looking for.
I want to talk mostly about the descriptions in this one, but I’m going to cover a few other things first.
This is a magic hedgerow maze. The usual stuff, like a thick fog and self-repairing hedge are present. But, more interestingly, it purports to be a mae. It does this by centering the adventure on ten unique dungeon geomorphs. Each one has a few encounter locations on it; I’d say the average is six or seven per geomorph. The idea is that as you exit one of the geomorph tiles the DM rolls to see which one you enter next. Hence the maze aspect. Each geomorph is detailed on two facing pages. You get a little dungeon map, with keys, a level range, a wandering monster chart, and all of the monster stats, at the end of facing page, along with the keyed location descriptions. Thus you get just about everything you need to run a few rooms, except maybe detailed magic item description (in the appendix) on the two facing pages. Bolding calls out monsters and treasure. It’s quite the effective format. Having everything in front of you makes running the locations easy. You can see, immediately, whats near the party and what’s there, from the key in front of your face. Stats, wanderers … it’s got it all. I can continue to quibble that noting sights, sounds, and reacting monsters on the map, proper, is still a good idea, but the idea behind the format is a good one. Dude thought about how to run an adventure at the table and fit the specifics of his adventure conceit, the geomorph tiles, in to a format that would work for the DM at the table. And that’s exactly what the fuck a designer should be doing. I note, perhaps, that the things is a little art heavy, which detracts from the real estate available for the keys. Likewise, I think I prefer, but do not insist, that monster keys ar eon a reference sheet I keep on my screen or printer out on a paper, so as to also have more real estate for text. This makes sense, to me, when you limiting yourself to just two pages per group of encounters.
There’s some decent treasure, but, also, the monster balance seems a bit off. The intro geomorph, for levels 1-3, is full of ghouls and wraiths on the wanderer table and in the keys. And you might find yourself on a geomorph with a vampire or medusa. I don’t think that the randomness of the maze is quite supportive of low level play, even with Run Away being a tactic. And, I don’t think you’re leveling up, given the size, to be able to start at level one and make it through all o fthe geomorphs. It’s just not large enough or paced enough.
But, the descriptions. And, to a lesser extent, the “design.” The descriptions are really just one level removed from minimally keying. “A green slime hides on the ceiling of this crypt.The tomb is otherwise empty.” or “Remnants of two stone sarcophagi, broken and smashed down to almost nothing.” I’m cherry picking a little here, but not by much. This is not the evocative descriptions I’m looking for. The length is close to correct; I’m usually looking for two or three sentences to get the vibe of a place. And I expect two or three GOOD sentences. Something that puts the image of the place, the vibe, in to my head so that I can riff on it. This is HARD, I think the hardest part of adventure writing. It’s gotta be terse, we don’t want to slog through multiple paragraphs, but, also, we want something evocative that brings the rooms to life.
Similarly, I’m looking for an adventure with situations, rather than just combat, and this one leans hard towards the Simple Hack portion of the spectrum. Check out this room from Xyntillan: “Maids’ Room. Simple beds by the walls, four zombies sitting around a wooden table. Muffled sounds of movement escape from the wardrobe in the SW corner. “ It’s a situation. We get a room description, in the room title, and a brief description focusing on the important bits: the zombies, who have the added bit of sitting around a table. And, then, the situation with the wardrobe. This isn’t exactly the most evocative, from a purely adjective/adverb standpoint, but the situation helps brings the room to life. Which is what you want: rooms with life.
And this doesn’t have that. It’s not necessarily offensive. The format is good. The descriptions are not overly long. BUt, they situations are few and far between which, when combined with the hack forward nature and the lack of descriptive life, will cause me to pass.
This is $12 at DriveThru. The preview is two pages and shows you the two facing entrance page geomorph descriptions, so it’s a great preview to understand what you’re buying. The $12 is, I suspect, paying for the big named artists.
A Vampire seeks adventurer for hiring because an investigation must be done in the village nearby. How come everyone is happy all the time? Why outsiders always see nervous smiles? What is the midnight mass that take place with many hooded figures? Why John Mill is having a wet dream while dead?
This 32 page adventure uses five pages to describe an underground temple with five rooms. *sigh* A conversational style. A lot of “first this happens and then this happens” and no specificity about anything. If you skip nothing else in your life, skip this.
Ok, so, a vampire dude hires you. Rumors are hes a vampire. His butler is a ghoul. He acts funny and sees you at night. He’s a vampire. And he hires you to go investigate this village because he thinks there’s a Ladybug there. Basically, a negative energy vampire that sucks unhappiness out of people. He thinks it is being held captive and wants the party to free it cause he feels bad for it. And he can’t do it because everyone in the village is super duper religious. Uh huh. Whatever. Anyway, this all takes place up till page thirteen.
Then we start in on the village. There’s this Omega stone structure in a field. That’s all we get. Nothing about the villagers, or the village. Just the structure and that they are all very nice and helpful. And on Saturday they all go to the hidden church under the stone structure. No villagers to interact with. No quirks. Nothing interesting other than they are very helpful. Great. This takes us up to page seventeen. Oh, we learn that seven of the villagers are level three of four magic users. (The stats in the back have then listed as 2 HD. I guess two d6 HD?) Anyway, this is introduced with “So, at this point it is important to mention that some of the people living in here are Magic Users of 3rd and 4th level.” Yeah. We’re gonna get to the writing style.
Next up is the underground temple. Five rooms. All pretty much ceremonial rooms. Get undressed, bathe, anoint, that kind of shit. And the last room has the ladybug person with all of the villagers asleep in it. Great. Excitement unbound. That’s the end.
The adventure bills itself, on the cover that doesn’t have a level range, as “an adventure of true horror.” Uh huh.
The writing style is stooopidily conversational and … jokey? “However, during the process, One of the gods started to complaint about the dishes never been done, and that this was a tremendous disrespect to the other gods, because everybody knew already it was Ned, even though Ned wouldn’t confirm.: Uh huh. DId I mention the references to Nick Cage? Uh huh. And, here’s a great aside in the text “And, although I believe torture to be not just morally abject, but also a terrible way to get information from people, in this very specific case it can be a good idea.” The entire fucking text is like this. Full of asides that do nothing but clog up the text. Sure, stick in a sly comment here and there for the DM, but this kind of shit is just terrible. How the fuck are you supposed to slog your way through an adventure with this shit in there? Local information? As if.
And slog you will. Because the adventure is fully organized in a “first this hing happens and then this thing happens” paragraph form. And, I don’t really mean events, or scenes, I think. More of a first do this thing to the players and then let the players learn this other thing. Even though, frankly, I’m struggling to recall any of things that the players are supposed to learn.
It’s all just crap. Nothing to see; move along, move along.
This is $5.55 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. You get to see the intro with the vampire lord dude. It’s a good indication of whats to come. How the intro is organized, in a first this then this happens way, is how the entire adventure is.
By Thomas Denmark
Night Owl Workshop
B/X
Levels 6-8
Birthed from the warped intellect of Joam Trassis the Unnatural, who was one of the last great Eldritch Lords, the tower has been rediscovered. Once a proud testament to Joam’s insidious genius, the Tower of the Egg fell into legend, its existence thought to be expunged by the relentless tide of time, its horrors banished to oblivion. Yet, like the quiet rustle of a dead leaf on an autumn wind, whispers of its enduring presence began to permeate the hushed tavern corners. An erratic map, penned with feverish, tremulous strokes, has surfaced, alluding to the Tower’s clandestine sanctuary. If the legends and conjectures bear truth, and the Tower of the Egg indeed perseveres, hidden amidst the gnarled wilderness, then its dreadful progenitor may yet endure. Trassis’ grotesque creations, bred within that blighted monument, may still writhe in its shadowed recesses, awaiting the dread command of their master. And if such abominations continue to breathe, then the horrors and marvels housed within the Tower of the Egg remain, waiting to birth a new era of unnatural domination.
This forty page digest adventure uses about sixteen pages to feature a wizards tower with five levels and about twenty rooms. And man is it bad. I mean BAD bad. Seriously. But, hey, at least it’s bad in a whole new way!
Hey, it’s got a monster reference sheet at the back! I love those! That’s nice!
But it’s BAD. “Bryce, you say everything is bad.” Yes, well, everything is bad. But, this one. Whooooa. I mean BAD. You ready for this?
“An examination of the crude map through the lens of a read magic spell discloses an array of cryptic phrases – the key to the incantation. However, the language is an archaic dialect of the magical lexicon, a tongue that is relegated to the dust-laden pages of ancient tomes. Only a scribe or magic-user deeply immersed in the esoteric lore may be able to decipher its antiquated structure and meaning” That one paragraph for the front door. The second one. The first one is longer and even more purple.
No? Well then how about room one then? “This room is a 40’ x 40’ enclosure, it is an orderly immaculate space within the ancient tower. Its environment is uncannily pristine, free of the inevitable layer of dust one would expect from a room untouched for centuries. The chamber seems frozen in time, preserved in a state of arrested decay by the arcane enchantments woven into its very stones. Those who step foot within are the first to disturb its timeless tranquility in eons.” Seriously? Those who step foot within are the first to disturb its timeless tranquility in eons? I’m supposed to use that to run this fucking room?
“This artifact is no ordinary key, but a cipher to unlock the stairwell that ascends to the next echelon of this godforsaken tower, beckoning the brave, or perhaps the foolhardy, to explore its dread heights further.” Jesus H fucking christ. Every single sentence in the tower is a shit fest of purple prose. It is SO tortured that I am beginning to wonder if The Boogeyman is to blame … AI. How about some leather armor you find? Here’s the entry: “Leather Armor +2: This is a magical set of leather armor that provides a +2 bonus to the wearer’s Armor Class.” Right? The description restates the item with just more words. That’s got to be AI, right?
Room after room. Paragraph after paragraph. But, the shit around the tower? That’s in a completely different style. It’s GOT to the designers real voice and the tower text has got to be procedurally generated. I don’t think I could come up with it normally even as an exercise on a bet. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve EVER seen prose this bad in an adventure. I’m not even sure I’ve seen writing this purple in a crappy Drizzle Durdan novel/
For a level eight adventure, this is basically a linear hack. Things pop out of stasis. Find the red key to open the next door, a red one.
“To awaken the chamber from its slumber, one must utter the sacred incantation, each syllable resonating with the raw, primal power of creation and carrying the weight of forgotten eons. It is a rhythm that matches the heartbeat of the universe, a melody composed by the Eldritch Lords in the twilight of their dominion. With each spoken word, the room stirs, echoes of ancient power flickering in the mirrors like dying embers coaxed back into flame.” Jesus fuck … you just can’t make this shit up.
Joke adventure is a joke. Come on man, if this how you want to be remembered as a designer?
This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. The last two show you tower locations. Note the change in descriptive style between the throw-away town/overland journey and the tower. Although, the little story about finding the map is getting up there in prose also.
By Christopher Capone
Wicked Cool Games
OSE
Levels 2-3
Among the witch’s valley mist, The Murk, sinister fey shadows terrorize the forest, demon spirits haunt old ruins, and undead howl from the volcanic shrine. Can the adventurer’s purge the vale of evil to gain its lost magic and riches?
This forty page adventure details three locations/adventures in The Murk, a misty forest. It’s got an interesting take on locations, and has some decent ideas and encounters. This is combined with some ok formatting as well. It’s not going to reach my Best levels, but as a first effort its get more fucking close than most big name designers will.
Ok, so, a section of land with a forest that is eternally misty during the day. A little town in it, with an abandoned town deeper in. People say there are fey around … and ruins deeper in. What this product delivers is something adjacent to thisWe do get a little town. It doesn’t overstay its welcome. There are a few people highlighted, and easy-ish to find. There’s a sentence or two with some keywords to help you run them, maybe a rumors section of things they can provide if asked and/or quests they could give or special shit they could do for the party. There’s decent use of bolding here to help the DM locate information. The first word or two of section toptic is bolded and, more importantly, relevant to the task at hand. So if its about Apples then its gonna start with Apples, bolded, not something like “If the party were to so inquire with Sir Buttface about the Apples in his orchard …” Put your fucking keyword first, like this dude does. There’s also a little “bullet” thing going on, although its ot really formalized. Important facts are separated well and easy to locate. In fact, all of the formatting seems … haphazard? But not in a bad way. Generally it lacks consistency. Different things are handled in different ways. That’s weird. But, also, I mean I can’t complain. It does it’s fucking job and thats what it is supposed to do.
Descriptive text isn’t winning any awards but is also largely above average and generally good enough. Thin mists waft gently. Bramble thorns capping sharp obsidian slopes. An uneven floor covered in dozens of thick burnt down candles. It’s some alright descriptions. And, further, the DM text doesn’t generally overstay its welcome. Four pages for thirteen rooms, with each page having at least half of it taken up with a map and illustration. Dude keeps the text focused.
But, I don’t want to talk about any of that. I’ve clearly rushed through that portion of the review. Formatting is decent, and descriptions are ok. Which, of course, is a compliment considering the source 😉
But, the adventures and vibe is what I want to talk about, mostly. There are three adventures. Some dude has lost his shadow, in the first. In the second you go to an abandoned town to Do Something and encounter the reason it was abandoned. Third, you go looking for a magic sword i some ruins/caves deep in The Murk. The first is a non-adventure. Dude has lost his shadow (fey shadow, not undead shadow) and want you to do something. There’s no real adventure here, at all, just a page noting the shadows stats and te fellow shadows he hangs around with. No real events or location to find them in, or anything else. Really just some stats for the most part. That did not give me high hopes.
But, the second and third adventures are more interesting. Both location based. The second is a town, abandoned,that is located inside a giant tree that has fallen. The third are some caves/shore/cliffs. Both of these have maps that are more open, but constrained. Kind of like the gatehouse/outside portions of Stonhell. Or, maybe, balley in B2/Caves of chaos. You have to image both without deeper dungeons. Maybe just the ogres cave or something scattered throughout. And, I’m not really communicating this well … the cope is smaller than either. But, I think both are an interesting concept. More open. And with encounters that are varied and interesting. Little sack dolls, murderous little bastards, inhabit the abandoned town, mostly. There’s a good mix of stuff to investigate, fuck with, and just stab. And the maps are annotated well,. They are keyed, but, also, make good use of the icons and drawings on it to pout major features on them, and then also the map is annotated with words like “Hidden Rong” or “Giant mushroom.” I really like the adventuring locales. Maps, concept, some folkloreish elements in the creatures without going heavy in that, interactivity, mildly evocative writing, formatting. It’s all good enough to make me not hate it and in some cases like the vibe.
Ok, so, maybe the descriptions could be better. And that first adventure sucks. But, I do want to mention one more thing, the thing that I think holds me back a lot. The overall atmosphere.
We see, from the marketing blurb, that “sinister fey shadows terrorize the forest, demon spirits haunt old ruins, and undead howl from the volcanic shrine.” And, yet, that really doesn’t come through in the setting. You get the idea that this is supposed to be a mist-shrouded landscape. And, from the tree log town, of a kind of shadowy town with these murderous little sack dolls. But the vibe that all implies is not really present. Sure, you get an individual description that is in the right area, but never in terms of a looming cohesive whole. Inside the abandoned town we get a scene with a “oil lamps slung from posts.” (Which are unlit,) And you get how, seen in the mist in an old tree log, this could have been very atmospheric. But, not in practice, and the descriptions doesn’t really lend itself to that. It’s trying, I think, but, overall the connectedness of the individual locations to the theme seems lost. The fey aspect, the shadowy forest … it just doesn’t come through at all in a meaningful way … in spite of a lot of the elements being there in the individual encounters.
And this, I think, is what majorly holds it back from a Best category. I really like a lot of what this is doing. Sure, it’s a little fractured in places, but, I can live with a little of that, and even call it charming. And I might even have a desire to run this one, if only that tie that binds that much more present. But, hey, GREAT first effort!
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. You get to see the NPC and town overview, and the rumors and wanderers, both of which are ok but not the strongest either. A few of the encounters in the abandoned town or cliff adventure, or even one of those maps, would have helped the preview a lot.
By Luiz Eduardo Ricon
Hexplore Publishing
OSR
Level 1?
Thunderhold: An ancient dwarven fortress built deep into a cliffside. Walls as strong as iron, stonework as intricate as a finely crafted gauntlet, a raging waterfall thundering through its main chamber. But why was it abandoned, so long ago? What are the secrets kept within its fortified structures? What treasures and perils it holds?
This 46 page adventure details a mighty dwarf fortress with three levels … and 24 rooms. It’s a basic dungeon, with basic and mundane room descriptions and poor;ly formatted to run. More churn for the ever churning march of the bad D&D adventures.
Mighty THUNDERHOLD! Gateway to the dwarf kingdoms! Deep is its chambers! Long ha sit been abandoned, before even man came to these lands! DARE TO ENTER ITS GATES AND EXPLORE ITS … uh … 24 rooms? Uh. OK.
The designer is claminig this takes four sessions to complete. One in town. One travelling through the wilderness. One in the dungeon. And one more to defeat the LEVEL NINE DROW in the last room. A fucking level nine drow. Everything up to this point is all “a zombie” or “two skeletons” or “some giant centipedes.” And then a level nine drow, with undead minions. Uh uh. I’m all for a lack of balance in OSR games, but this is not what is meant by that statement.
Ok, so, town consists of some generic buildings and generic NPC’s. EVeryone is chipper, competent, and full of caring and compassion. IE: boring. One night a zombie shows up in the river that runs next to town. After that yo’re hired for 100gp each to go upriver to MIGHTY THUNDERHOLD and see whats up.
This is, weirdly, the only good part of the adventure, the zombie attack. And by that I mean that there’s a little table of things that could happen to get the party involved. “Men march down the street with torches and pitchforks, heading toward the river” or “a captain of the town uard call upon men to join him on a mission.” or “the innkeeper rings the bell and yells WERE CLOSING, NOW!!” I think those all imply some things that I, as the DM, can work with. That captain is going to be pressing men in to service with a kick and a shove and a griff non sensea attitude of “you can go or i can gut you now!” The other two should be pretty easy to run as well. This is the last good thing, and the only good things, in the adventure.
Ok, wilderness time. You gotta travel through the wilderness to get to the dungeon. AT this point, major confusion ensues. Two days to reach the forest, a day to cross it if you use the road two if you do not, and then a day to get to the foot of the mountains and Thunderhold. Then, we get a long section telling us what happens if we follow the riverbanks. Or through the grain fields. What the fuck?! It makes no sense at all. But, along the way you pick up three little mini-quests of shit people want you to do in the dungeon/wilderness.
Congrats! You made it to the might dwarf fortress! Revel in its majesty! “A 30 ft x 20 ft room with empty shelves and racks. Stale and pungent smell. Mold covered barrels and crates piled up in one corner” No? Ok. “A collapsed room with rubble and debris.” No? Ok. “This partially crumbled square room smells of rot and decay. There’s moss and mold everywhere.” Majestic! Inspiring! Wonder & Awe!
I know, they sound short. But we forget that the rooms also have to include all of the door information. Yeah! Padding! It’s just padded out with useless detail. Longish descriptions that tell you nothing. A thundering waterfall in the next room? Good thing that sound is never mentioned before you get there.
It’s just the usual garbage. Minimal descriptive text. Padded out shit. There’s nothing here of note. Just another POS clogging up the adventure stream. My heart despairs at the thought of people thinking that this is D&D.
This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is eighteen pages. Which means, of course, that you don’t actually get to see anything of the adventure. *sigh*
I’m getting hit with spam blasts a couple of times a day. I’m updating my filters each time, but they keep coming. And sometimes I’m out of pocket and the spam in the comments sticks around until I get to it.
I could make commenting harder. I don’t know, captcha, or some kind of account requirement or blacklist subscription or something else. Or I could just leave it along and do what I’m doing now.
Please spam this post with comments on this. Do you give a shit? Do you have strong personal feelings about one solution or another?
And, please excuse the non-review post. I do try to not do that.
By Daniel Kingsley
Ripped Tabard Adventures
Castles & Crusades
Level 5
Not all decisions are easy. Sometimes heroes find themselves in a Muddy Mess, where every decision has the potential to be the wrong one. […] players will be challenged with gnoll extortionists, fiendling conmen, and an angry druid with metal-eating monsters.
This 27 page adventure is about a town caught between a strip miner and a druid. I guess? It’s got long read aloud, hard to navigate descriptions, and is full of missing information. And, in the end, it’s a rather basic thing with a couple of larger humanoid battles.
So, a miner hires a foreman, who hires hobgoblins guards, and the foreman kills him and takes over the “mine.” By which I mean a water hose used for strip mining. Hence the literal muddy mess. Everything is stripped bare with just mud hanging around. Druid gets pissed and sends “metal eater” tentacle monsters to eat all the metal in town. Party arrives, needing a blacksmith, and is begged for help. If you help the town and kill the druid then strip mining continues and eventually, off camera, some druids show up and destroy everything and curse the party for a year. If you help the druid then the final battle is against the town-ish/miner and the town is abandoned. No other outcomes are encouraged. Hence the figurative muddy mess and “no good solutions” mentioned in the text. Seems ham-handed to me, but what do I know.
There are some references, here and there, to some decent things. The initial mud description is a good one, gunking up and coming off in slabs. And here and there anNPC has a decent motivation, like the two dwarves shopowners who don’t really seem to give a shit. Cause they don’t. Cause they been through trouble before and they know they just have to wait for things to settle and the short-lived people to die. Heh. That’s a nice trait for someone with a long life span and perhaps the only really good description of a dwarf personality trait I’ve seen.
Otherwise, this thing got hella issues.
Read-aloud is LONG, and frequent. Monologues are never good, especially when they span multiple paragraphs or even almost a page. That’s a bad way to handle the situation. You want something with more interactivity, a back and forth with the players and so on. I like to play with my phone when listening to long monologues. Besides, they usually impart no information anyway.
Descriptions are a pain also. Multiple paragraphs of DM text for the DM to slog through. Which makes it hard to find the information you’re looking for. The game pauses. Phones come out. Whatever was of interest in the text is beyond usable because of the delay. It makes for a boring game session.
The editing here is quite bad, and it starts at the first words. “The Angry Druid is a Castles and Crusades adventure …” No. Maybe that was the working title, but its now A Muddy Mess. The hired hobgoblins are a mess. They are only obliquely referred to in places and never actually make an appearance. “[the townfolks] are angry that [the miner] hired hobgoblins as city guards.” But the guards never show up, in any way. I guess they are referred to in the battle section, but that’s it. No vignettes. No actually encountering them anywhere. The water cannon is the same way. It’s just kind of referred to a couple of times and never shows up in the text. I guess I may have missed it, but I looked several times. Again, just obliquely referred to a couple of times.
There’s an entire section that is weirdly out of place. IThe text is describing some gnolls showing up for protection money and then it launches in to what looks like the hooks for the actual adventure? But that’s after, a long way after, the initial appeal for help. It’s almost like the entire thing is a stream of consciousness writing endeavor. “Oh, yeah, I guess I should include this.” And the metal monsters, which everyone in town refers to, don’t really show up at all except when you meet the druid. “They are hiding in the woods, waiting for the druids signal.” Uh huh.
It’s just a mess of an adventure. Hard to grok. Hard to run. Hard to dig through. Things missing.
No bueno.
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. Enjoy that read-aloud and the descriptions! So, I guess a good preview, if you imagine the entire adventure is like that preview.
By Chaoclypse
Self Published
Generic/Cairn
Level ?
The Lair contains dark, eldritch secrets and way, way, too many frogs. Survive its horrors, and you may eventually be granted audience with the mythical Frog God…
This twelve page digest adventure features a dungeon with twelve rooms and six outdoor locations. And I’m using “locations” very loosely here. Because te designer seems to have forgotten the primary purpose of an adventure. IE: this is garbage.
“Special Thanks to Chris McDowall for his helpful posts and videos on adventure creation.” Ought oh! I don’t know shit about McDowall, I think?, but I do know that endorsement, of Chris, by this designers, is eyebrow raising, after reviewing this adventure.
Because tis Crap. Let us look at the hook. It is, of course, a d6 table. Because the designer does not understand randomness and its purpose in an adventure. Anyway, our hooks are “You love frogs.” or “You hate frogs.” or “Rumors of treasure.” and so it goes. Yes, I know, we don’t need hooks. But, when offered, we do expect more than this, correct? No? We’ve given up all hope of anything and everything? Nothing makes sense anymore? Everything is meaningless, now, in 2023. Time to talk to Ohm, my friend!
Ok, ok, let’s look at the actual adventure. The one with a content warning for “Body horror, Hallucinogens, Cults”. Let’s see here. We’ve got a short wilderness crawl before getting to the frog lair. It’s six locations, five of which you’ll visit, so, essentially a linear wilderness. Oh. They all fit on one page. Oh. Let’s see, location one is “The border between the outside world and the valley of the frogs. The journey starts perilously, and climbing down the hills is difficult.” Oh, wait, that the adventure summary. The real location is … oh, no, that IS the location. That’s location one. Good luck suckers! “Starts perilously” Fuck off man. Fuck right off. You know its the designers fucking job to define what “start perilously” means, right? Location 5, the Weel. “Well, well well. It’s a well. Those foolish enough to climb inside find …” That’s it. Nothing more. No table of whats inside even. This is utter and complete garbage. I’m fucking insulted, for the fucking hobby, by this “adventure.”
THe reallair if twelve rooms on four pages. Each room gets lots of space for all of those fucking door/exit descriptions that some of you fuckwits insist is worthwhile. Bask ye heathens in the glow of “Passageway to an intersection leading to four and five.” Yeah, verily, the best of all exit descriptions! Perhaps rivaled only by “Door to four!” Fuck you all.
Our room descriptions have a header, like “Tadpole nest” which is good. The descriptions come in bullets, ose style, which is a decent format. But, the designer doesn’t know how to use them. “Pile of unusually large tadpoles” is not a description for the nest. It brings little to life. Oh, oh, the treasure room! “Piles of green jewels and treasure.” I fucking hate my life. THis is what it has become. This shit.
You know, there was a chance here. The wandering table, perhaps the only thing in the adventure with ANY decent ideas, has this entry, which is by far the best “Large tadpoles carried in the arms of human-sized bipedal frog” Meh. But, nursing from a human that is carrying it? That would indeed be the body horror and culty shit we were promised? Cause there is no body horror and no cults, from the warning, in this adventure. At all.
This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see that wilderness crawl. No, thats the crawl, not a summary of it.
The link to the product in this review is probably an affiliate link. If you follow the link and buy the product, I make some money. Just thought you should know.
