The Beast of Jelin’s Mire

Posted on October 17, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Irene D.B.
Self Published
Zweihander
Basic Tier

Something lurks within the perilous swamp of Jelin’s Mire. The Townsfolk of Jelinton are falling victim to a series of grim attacks by a terrible creature. They have called upon the aid of the Guild, a grim organization of monster hunters to kill the Beast of Jelin’s Mire.

This was a review request from someone. A very very very bad someone.

This thirty page adventure uses eleven pages to detail … two scenes? Three scenes? Of which two are combats? It’s a nightmare of formatting and not knowing how to write an adventure.

You’re monster hunters, sent to the village of Jellin to kill a monster. It seems a few villagers have died and a kid has gone missing. 

This adventure contains trigger earnings for animal death and monstrous plants. And general violence? Isn’t that D&D?

And isn’t Zweihander a Warhammer clone? Isn’t that the game where to kill muties, who want to eat your flesh? And those ratling things that everyone seems to masturbate continually over? That’s Warhammer, right?

This adventure has a golem in it that is a townsperson. And a guy with a clockwork arm. And an ogre dude lives in town. And a dude with a boar head. And a ratling chick that works at the inn who has many suitors, both men and women. That’s Warhammer? Can it be a Boot Hill adventure if its in space with no references at all to the old west or the themes therein?

But, let’s explore a little more that boar dude. His description tells us that “Jor has the head of a goat, and a heart of gold. He is constantly sweaty. He refuses to wear a shirt, and has a sculpted body. He stands at about 7 ft.” Uh … ok. I guess we know a little more about the designer now … Did I mention that there is a brief little break away section dealing with threesomes with some of the townfolk? 

Lest we think I criticize, I do not. I mean, yeah, I am, but not for THAT reason. Especially since it does nothing related to the adventure? The morons are gonna come out of the woodwork to quote the downfall of society, but all I give a shit about is the relevance to the adventure.

But, also, I don’t really give a shit very much about that. I mean, in the context of including shit in the adventure that is irrelevant. Backstory, sex shit, I don’t care. What I DO care about is the degree of concentration on these irrelevant topics to the exclusion of the actual adventure. 

Kristi Fortis is an NPC. They have the profession of Courtier and the Social Class of Aristocrat. We are told “They have been elected uncontested for the past four elections by the town.” For what? Mayor? Garbage collector? There is absolutely no indication. Hey, instead of concentrating on other irrelevant shit, maybe you could put down what the fuck their job is?

This continues to the adventure. It’s a fucking mess. You get to dig through paragraph after paragraph, with sentences like “If they want to go to the local tavern …” Seriously. It’s just paragraphs. Oh, there’s a heading now and again. Here’s one “Later Gator.” Hmmm, I wonder what that means? No? No idea? Don’t fucking do this. There’s so much wrong here that it’s hard to actually list it all. Don’t use if/then conditionals. Don’t write in paragraph form as the major style of writing. Use some keys to help separate out content. Make the adventure easy to scan so the DM can find information quickly and easily. NONE of that is done. Just scene after scene with a fuck ton of conditions embedded in paragraphs. I weep for the future.

But, the adventure proper, you ask! You go in to town. Oh no, people missing/killed. FOr some fucking reason you go find a woman in a tower. She’s a golem. (Thats fucking boring. Don’t say golem. Tell us shes made out of weeping mud. Or snow. Held together by hair or something. With STATS as a golem. Imagination trumps mechanics. Ok, anyway, you go to this golems tower, for some reason, and get some rose petals, I guess to help a dying kid. Then you go out in the swamp and fight an octopus with hands on the ends of its tentacles. The adventure is now over. Thirty pages for that. Sorry, no, eleven pages are used for that. Eleven pages. 

But, hey, if you attack the golem then she chokes each of you out, ties you up, delivers you to the town sheriff, who tells you that you shouldn’t attack her if you want to keep the monster hunter contract. IE: No Consequences to our actions. IE: Mary Sue.

This is an absolutely atrocious adventure. There is nothing evocative. There is no interactivity to speak of. There is no formatting to help run it at the table. It fails on every account. I don’t give a fuck about the sex shit. I give a fuck that the adventure design, formatting, and interactivity stinks.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages, with the last three being relevant to making a purchasing decision. By then you should be able to figure out the focus on anthro kink and lack of organization in the text.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/340119/The-Beast-of-Jelins-Mire–Adventure-for-Zweihander-RPG?1892600

And, lest we think I’m a heathen, the last page advertises a work called “LGBT in a Grim and Perilous World.” The description is pretty interesting. To quote “exploring how other cultures have historically seen such things and how you might use this knowledge in a Zweihander, or other fantasy RPG, game.” A focus on how gender and sexuality have not always been as cut and dry as presented in history, and influences seen in history and mythology. That’s cool. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/331633/LGBT-in-a-Grim-and-Perilous-World–Supplement-for-Zweihander-RPG

Posted in 2 out of 10, Reviews | 29 Comments

Witches of Frostwyck

Posted on October 15, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Joseph R. Lewis
Dungeon Age Adventures
OSR/5E
Levels 1-4

The ancient world of Harth is dying, but you’re going to die even sooner if you can’t escape from Frostwyck. You’re lost in a frozen forest of deadly predators and mysterious recluses. Your only refuge is the tiny village of Frostwyck, where metal is rare and kindness is rarer. And there are worse things in the shadows than mere bloodthirsty beasts. Witches haunt the groves of the north. Most keep to themselves, content to guard their secrets and powers. But one torments them all. Dama Zhadna has cursed the village so that none can escape. And now you’re trapped here. You’re going to die here. Unless you find a way to defeat the Witches of Frostwyck.

This fifty page adventure describes a small region around a village with about 22 locations.  Lewis knows how to write an adventure of this scale, and delivers again with something terse, easy to use, and evocative with great situations to explore.

You think my negative reviews sound like a broken record? I think my positive ones are super shitty, saying only things like “its good” and nonsense like that. Whatever. I swore I would review more stuff from “good” designers AND that I’d work through my entire request list before delivering the depths once again of that cesspool known as DriveThru New Releases,

There are 5e and OSR versions of this adventure. Which would make Lewis one of the best 5e designers in existence since the open-ended nature of his adventures style perfectly match the OSR sandboxy style. Notably, Lewis states that this adventure can take a 5e character from levels one through four or five, and that in either system you’re look at twenty to forty hours of play … five to ten sessions at four hours each. And I believe it! There’s a lot to see and do here, without there being any dungeons, proper. This could be a little self-contained campaign!

You can think of this as a kind of Ravenloft thing going on. You’ve got a Baba Yaga running around in her spider house and a cursed village/region that no one can leave, always getting turned around and coming back. Enter the party. There are the usual “wandering down the road” hooks, but, also, a hook where you are prisoners on a river barge, being transported, and the brage gets attacked by river pirates … leaving the party with nothing. And the first few encounters on the map, near the river, are set up as such, with some supplies like clothes and a few simple weapons and so on. Then you roll onin to the village, assuming you are following the main road in from the river, and discover the troubles.

And troubles there are, aplenty! As, I guess, you’d expect if a Baba Yaga lived in the woods nearby. The local priest is missing. As are a few villagers. Oh, and the pond in the center of the village has a monster living in it. Rumours of witchcraft IN the village! And outside the village. And in your head. Pretty much everyone is stupid paranoid about witches. For good reason, but, still! Oh, also, that river monster is going to eat everyone in the village if they don’t make their annual offering of 300# of meat. And by “annual” I mean “it’s time to do it.” 

Witchy McWitcher has captured the soul of several others, as her allies, if you call her name three times and summon her to fight her. You can find out more about them in the woods, and/or find her house and destroy their coil bottles, freeing them from her service. One s a doppelganger of an old babushka living in a hovel in the woods with her husband and daughter. The real old lady is buried under a nearby bridge. The husband is good natured and hen pecked. The daughter is a snow construct that just looks like her. (What’s that recent eastern/central european horror movie where they sell their soul to the devil for constructs?) It’s perfectly done here, as both folkish and a doppelganger. The encounters, the locations, they are situations and vignettes. People(ish ..) to talk to and things to resolve.  Sure, there’s a fight or three, at random, but also a lot more complexity if you want it. Clues to other locales and situations to resolve. It’s interlinked in a way that is DESIGNED.

The format is DungeonAge house style, which is an easy to read triple column. How the fuck he does this I have no idea, but he does. I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone else ever do triple column in a way that doesn’t need a magnifying glass, but not here. Basic locations fit in a single column, with terse and evocative overview/read-aloud text with bolded and underlined keywords that lead you to other paragraphs and butt information. For how Lewis uses it, it perfectly matches what he needs to accomplish. The perfect amount of information provided and the perfect format for what he’s doing to communicate that information. I can’t say enough kind things about it.

And, he does the small stuff also. Cross-references abound, and magic items can be unique and wonderfully done, both normal magic items and minor items and effects. There’s reference sections for monsters. The DM is WELL supported here.

Well, except … some travel times/distances for the map would be nice, so I had some idea how long to run an overland journey. And a single page of NPC summaries would have been nice, to better manage some NPC’s talking about other NPC’s and situations. 

Oh, wait, hang on. DId I mention the villagers mistrust witches? Yeah? That includes magic users. And others who are unholy. There’s a paladin out there, also, stalking about, illing the unholy. Like the party. “Irena – Steam rises from her bare head. Dried blood clings to her dented armor. A heavy chain-and-sickle clinks in her hand.” A relentless one, that one!

Lewis does a terrific job. Traditional dungeons don’t appear here, but for a
“Plotty” sandboxy adventure its perfect. A great adventure for both 5e or OSR folks looking for that in their lives, I can’t recommend Dungeon Age enough. They should all be pretty much an auto-buy from you.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is half the product, at 25 pages, more than enough to get a sense of the product and if you want to buy it. $8 for 20-40 hours of adventure, that you can essentially use immediately? (You need that NPC summary sheet man …) That’s a steal!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/354011/Witches-of-Frostwyck?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 23 Comments

Peril in Olden Wood

Posted on October 12, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Ray Weidner
The Merciless Merchants
OSE
Levels 3-5

Olden Wood…verdant and dense with thicket and tree. Dangers lurk under shaded boughs, nurtured by wilderness and bloody history. Long ago, it was the domain of faeries and pagan tribes, but civilization arrived at its fringes generations back. Prosperous trade passed easily on roads guarded by holy knights. But in the last generation, the wilderness has slowly reclaimed Olden Wood and traffic has become ever more perilous. Will brave adventurers reestablish man’s domain, or will it be swallowed by dark shadows?

This 91 page adventure details a small regional slammed full of shit going on, with the main attraction being a three level sixty-ish room dungeon. Descriptions are not the most evocative in places, but the situations described are great and the actual room descriptions are generally short enough to not be a pain.

There is a correct amount of information to present at every level of zoom on. A hexcrawl requires a certain amount of detail. A dungeon room requires a different amount of detail. This adventure is best described, I think, as a regional setting with a Thing Going On (the main dungeon.) And what Ray does here, in this regional adventure setting, is provide the correct amount of detail at every level. Organized well. With decent enough descriptions. AND A METRIC FUCKING TON OF INTERACTIVITY.

Seriously, that’s what I want to talk about to begin with. The amount of shit going on in this place is absolutely the correct amount. It’s not a barren place, with only one thing going on, or a few things. And it’s not so overly full of shit that you can’t keep track of what’s going on. Instead, it’s the correct amount for the scale.

I’m looking, right now, at page four. It lists twelve different things the party could fuck around with. Drive out the kobolds. Recover a missing spice caravan, Rescue the caravan leader. Eliminate the river pirates. Purge some cultists. Remove the priest of the new faith. Get the reeve to toe the line of his lord. Rescue missing kids. Let loose The Evil One, bring back an old alter, find the armor of a ancient hero, and restart the Solstice festival. Some of these are at odds with each other (purge the cultists/remove the priest) some of these are naturally related (the kobods, spice, caravan leader.) Most of these fit in to the hooks provided, from the spicing guild to the old duke wanting his taxes back. 

But wait, that’s not all! You get a page long table  (at the start of every major section) that lists the important situations going on in that section. Whats goin g on, the threats, complications and opportunities. Perfect! I’m oriented in a great way! 

The new religion/old cult shit is handled well. Some people are REALLY in to one or the other, others just go to church on sunday man, and others dont give a fuck at all. Along with some hidden, or not to hidden, signs that you belong to one group or another. Rumors fit in perfectly, leading the party to places when true, with some fun false ones as well. 

Plots within plots within plots! Every place is seemingly overrun with things to do! The local temple … thats’ related to the new religion, that’s related to the new priest, that could be interconnected to multiple quests? We get a short little description, a listing (with cross reference!) to the priest and his personality, etc, and then a short little section on trease in the temple, for looting purposes. Or thievery. Or, maybe for blackmail purposes? Cause there’s a letter from the Mueiel, the eldest daughter of the innkeeper, at the bottom of his chest. “The fruits of our special friendship are beginning to show …” Rought Roh Raggy! Looks like there might be some leverage over this firebrand of a new faith preacher! Or, the helpful bright eyed kid in the town square, who will be your faithful companion. And good naturally spill all ofyour secrets, with no ill intent, to the local spy for the river wreckers. Who are actually a small village nearby, essentially a bandit village. Oh, and they have a lot of relatives in the main town, so, you know, nothing is ever clean cut here.

Everything interconnected. Shit to do. No excessive wasterd detail on things that don’t matter.

Organization is good. I noted the situation overviews at the beginning of each section. Thats fucking great. A one page monster summary sheet. Good use of bolding, bullets and whitespace to draw the eye to important points, mixed with paragraph style to add context.

The dungeon maps are great, with lots of interesting features and interconnections. The rooms are generally well described, although some get a little long and more than a few could use a little work on the evocative text department. That’s a hard skill. But, still, you need it. Monsters in the main dungeon get an order of battle. There are multiple ways to assault a keep. 

It’s fucking rocking in every single way.

The outdoor maps get a little busy. It feels like its trying to emulate an art style, but, they are just a little much for my eyes. It’s pretty, but, a little much for me, in order to support quick reference. The dungeon maps, though, are stellar. 

I could go on and on and on about this thing. 

Thisis, I think, as close as your going to come to matching the really good Judges Guild shit form the olden days. Or The Keep. It could serve as a model for how to write a regional adventure, from the formatting and style used to the degree of detail and specificity, to the number of things going on and the degree of interconnection. This continues to the main dungeon, the multiple ways in, the maps of the dungeon proper with its interconnectivity and so on. It is almost worth me recommending as the regional setting that you graduate to, that EVERYONE should graduate to, after their adventurers grow up past level 3. 

This is $8 at DriveThru.A FUCKING STEAL! The preview is sixteen pages and perfectly shows you multiple section sof the text. Town, organizations, writing style, you can get a great idea of what you are buying. A perfect preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/397008/Peril-in-Olden-Wood?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 4, Reviews, The Best | 31 Comments

The Dream Thieves

Posted on October 10, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Diogo Nogueira
Old Skull Publishing
AZAG/AFF/Troika

The Amaranthine Sorcerers, rulers of their self-named city, are servants of an entity that demands dreams as payment for their gifts of sorcerous powers. But the sorcerers themselves grew fond of these dreams, or perhaps the magic they received from this entity imparted them with this obsession with the oneiric. Now they hoard dreams. They collect them as kings collect treasures from the realms they conquer. They covet the dearest dreams of others. They steal dreams from one another, in a strange rivalry, as great as any mortal foe. But they are never satisfied. Others also covet those dreams, especially those that lost them to this greedy cabal. They seek brave adventurers to venture into the sorcerers’ inner citadel and recover them. For a great reward, of course. But are these rewards worth the great risk of challenging sorcerers that can manipulate both your dreams and your worst nightmares?

This sixty page adventure marks the end of my engagement with Troika. Errr, I mean, it has six wizards towers, each with a dream theme, and some tenuous “make shit up as you go along” mechanics. Some rooms have an interesting description, but, ultimately, I hope I die before I wake. 

I continue to work my way through my review requests. And I continue to hate the people who suggest I review things.

Ohs Nos! Them wizards are stealing dreams and someone hired you to do a “heist” to get them back! And in the context of this adventure, “heist” means … I don’t know … the usual dungeon thing?I mean, get to the tower, go inside, and wander around the six rooms until you find the dream you are looking for and leave again? That’s a heist? This whole thing reeks of an unfocused design.

There are six towers, each themed to a different dream wizard. All in a compound in the center of the city. Why six? I don’t know. WOuld it have been better to say six and then fully stat one instead of doing all six? Maybe, but then that would require some hard design work, I suspect. WIll you use all six? Probably not. 

To get to the towers, in the center of the city, have you have to get in to the central compound. During the day the gate is guarded with three soldiers and one apprentice wizard. The apprentice takes bribes. At night there are three apprentices and one soldier. The soldier takes bribes. There’s your evocative heist moment. 

Then you get to make a wisdom test to navigate the maze of streets to get to the towers. Again, suerdy superdy evocative there, with that description and mechanic. Can’t wait to game it. 

Then you get to the towers. Once inside … you might get confronted by a dream or nightmare! Ohs Nos! “The Living Nightmare sensing the presence of free dreamers ambush you in one of the passages. You were paralyzed by fear but made a sacrifice to get away. What did you sacrifice?” Yeah, it’s full of indi game narration. I can groove a little on this mechanic, but not like this. And it’s just all garbage tack on shit. There’s nothing going on here except what appears in that text. Pffft.

Ok, then you’ve got the rooms proper. They are themed to the towers. Shadows, Dreams, Skulls, etc. There’s little bit of an artsy feel to them, and I don’t exactly mind that. “A large, circular, dark room with six small displays of light that project shadows on the ceiling. Each of them shows an ever changing silhouette of a warrior in fighting positions; a tree growing and withering; a bird flying; a human being born, growing, getting older, and dying; a city growing and being ruined; an egg hatching and growing into a serpent that lays an egg. There’s a bigger lantern in the middle with sheets of paper hanging above it.” Yeah, ok, a little pedantic in the beginning, but it’s got decent energy. Of course, it ends with “everyone in the room has a gut feeling that they need to make a shape for the shadow the light projects.” Fuck that shit. You don’t tell people what to do. They get to figure the fucking shit out. Make a stealth test! Make a wisdom test! All to nothing. 

The mem is that the indi scene has no meat to it. All flash and no game. Just make rolls with no consequences, and narrate your own blah blah blah. And this “adventure” certainly lives up to that. And that’s all you’re getting from me on this. I’m not reviewing Troika shit anymore unless someone verifies and smrears to fucking god with a cherry on top that its a real adventure.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages and shows you nothing of the towers, although the last page shows you that “evocative’ entrance to the city center, with the guards. Pfftt. And a big ol Fuck You to whoever suggested I review this. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/407809/The-Dream-Thieves?1892600

Posted in My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Reviews | 32 Comments

The Siege of Bonemoore Keep

Posted on October 8, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Mihailo Tesic
Purple Duck Games
DCC
Level 0

The Thrallmaster’s hordes come… are you ready for the Siege of Bonemoore? The call to arms does not always come to warriors, and fate has found your humble party in Bonemoore Keep when the ghastly armies of the Thrallmaster attack. Faced with demonic fury without and mysterious sorcery within the Keep, will you survive to carry the day and start a career in intrepid Dungeon Crawling?

This 72 page funnel adventure features a “siege” of a keep … and extensive dungeoncrawl under it. It is absolutely on eo the wordiest adventures I’ve ever seen, making it ludicrous to think about running it.

The opening read aloud is two pages long. In italics. At work, my office is completely barren but for two things: a monitor and an eighteen inch tall statue of Don Quixote. This is what my life is. It’s 2022 and people still pump out a two page read-aloud. And then put it down in italics. Because this is the way the world operates. Anyone can do anything at any time. And isn’t that great? But, also, SHOULD you do it? Given a world of complete freedom the question becomes not CAN you do it, but what do you choose to do, and how. And this dude chose to write two pages of intro text for read-aloud that is in italics. Because I am a hypocrite, let me say that it ends with someone yelling the obligatory “were all gonna die” and the guard sergeant hitting in the jaw … the dudes teeth flying out of his mouth all in to the mud … and these sergeant picks them up and gives them to you “Here, might bring you some luck. They were lucky enough to get out of his stupid mouth!” Ho ho! That’s great! That’s fucking specificity! 

Ok, so, the keep is being sieged by The Thrallmaster and his army of mountain men, cannibals and flesh puppets. You’re the local peasants who are taking refuge inside. 

Oh, wait, hang on. I forgot. Before the adventure starts there is a “rewards” section, among others. That section takes one and a half pages to tell the DM that, sometimes, the adventure will give a party member a +1 stat bump. One and a half pages. To tell us that someone will sometimes get a +1, permanently. One and a half pages. 

Ok now, time to start the adventure! Back to another three long paragraphs of r read aloud! In italics. *groan* Flame golems show up. You fight them and put out some fires, I guess. Then some cannibal ghoul dudes try to climb the walls and you kill them. Then some dudes show up with a battering ram and you get to put the oil on them.  The golem/fire thing takes seven pages. The ghouls on the wall thing takes four pages to describe. The battering ram only takes four paragraphs, so, you know. You only have to kill 11 ghouls, out of twenty, in that encounter though. So, you know, a quick and easy one.

We transition now to another page of read-aloud. The keeps command has disappeared inside! Ohs Nos! Go save him/find him/etc! The entrance room is two pages long. The dungeon room with cells is like six pages long. To be fair, the Bailey room is only half a page. 

This is the norm here. Two pages for an encounter.  I’m not fucking doing that. I don’t give a fuck how good your adventure is, I’m not digging through two fucking pages of text to run a fucking room. And, to be clear, these are not complex rooms with lots of things to investigate and look at. These are, almost exclusively, rooms with a combat in them and nothing else, or else, some other “single encounter” type of room. This is fucking onsense. Two fucking pages for a fight? No. Absolutly not. You figure the fuck out how to write it down shorter. Or, you figure the fuck out how to write it down in a such a way that it is easy to refer to during the game, with bullets, or bolding or whitespace or some such. I am absolutely the fuck not pausing my game to five fucking minutes, or more, while I dig through two pages of your text in order to figure out how to run th encounter in this room. Are you shitting me? I would be the worst DM in the history of the universe if I did that. We do NOT pause the fucking game. We interact with the fucking players. That’s the entire point of the fuckinggame, the interaction between the players and DM. It is not “the DM spends five minute intervals reading the book while the players dick around on their phones.” Fucking to pages of read-aloud. Fucking two pages for a combat encounter. As if.

So, the siege turns in to a dungeoncrawl, with no siege elements anymore, and this is the main loop of the adventure.

I have absolutely no patience for this kind of shit anymore. There are literally a bajillion million adventures available. And yet, my standard for not calling something shit is rather low: do no make the DMs life a living hell if they want to run it. It doesn’t have to be fucking good. It just has to not make the DMs life a living hell. And yet most adventures can’t even reach that simple baseline. I have high standards. *pffft* I have low fucking standards, it’s just redonkulous that adventures can’t even to get to that level. 

This is $8 at DriveThru. The only preview is that bull “quick” one that shows you nothing, so, you know, Fuck Off.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/316655/The-Siege-of-Bonemoore-Keep?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 22 Comments

The Queen of Spades

Posted on October 5, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Artem Serebrennikov
Self Published
5e
Level 7

Six murders in a single night! A major city in the Forgotten Realms is rocked by a series of gruesomely bizarre deaths of notable citizens. What mysterious murderer could have slain six people in different corners of the city? Why did the criminal leave a playing card at each scene? Could a high-stakes card game that happened ten years ago explain the goings-on? And, most importantly, is the goddess of misfortune personally involved?

This 77 page murder mystery adventure is divided in to three parts. While it coversthe bases, in a good way, in having a murder mystery at a higher level, it does so by making parts one and two irrelevant to the main arc. And dear god is it ever wordy. 

This assumes a magical city ala Forgotten Realms, and isn’t going to work well if you’re not down with a magical renfaire. No digs intended, it’s just the environment the adventure uses. And no city described, which is fine, except the specific locales, which is also fine. It’s what I expect and want in an adventure like this.

Ohs nos! Five people died last night in bizarre ways. The underworld, or the guard, hire the party to figure out what’s going on. You go visit each one. You get a multi paragraph description of the site, which doesn’t really tell you anything except setting the scene … which could be A LOT shorter and more evocative. Then you a multi-paragraph section on the victim and how they lived their life. Then you get a couple of paragraphs on their Dark Secret (they each have one) which are all related to spreading out some red herrings. Then you get a long section on how they actually died. In every case its some freak accident. Then you get a section on witnesses. Yeah, it’s long. Then you get a page or so on clues in bullet format, each one VERY long. It’s fucking LONG. I’m not digging through all that shit to run this. And the clues are in a weird format, with no bolding or such to direct you as to which clue paragraph relates to what described in it, making referencing it hard. And then there are just weird things like “There’s a trunk.” in the clue section. Well, how the fuck do the party know there’s a trunk? It’s not in the overview description for the DM. I guess the party just asks “DO we find anything else” and the DM just spends ten minutes reading everything and telling the players as they stumble across it? Anyway, you get why SPeak With Dead and Divination works … everything wa an accident.

In part two you go visit some locations that are not murder scenes, that the clues at the scenes have led you to. There are people to talk to. These sections are are LONG. A couple of pages, no bolding to help direct you. Lots of shit you don’t care about. Lots of shit to dig through as you are running it.

But, none of those locations matter. And none of the deaths matter either. After each location explored you have a 25% chance of running in to Mr Bad Luck, the immediate cause of everything. And then after some questions some mercs show up that were hied to kill him/bring him back to the main baddie. You then go hack up a gambling den to stop the plot to summon blah blah blah. Did I mention how long the descriptions of the gambling den are?

So, is it a murder mystery? No. Nothing you do matters. You’re just killing time, as one seemingly does in almost every 5e adventure, till the plot trips over you. Just put in no effort on the investigation of the bodies, put in no effort on the follow up locations and you get the adventure handed to you then. That’s why it can be run as murder mystery: nothing you do matters. 

If the crime scenes and locations could be shortened, to only about a page each by removing all of the excess shit, and if the descriptions were quite a bit more evocative, then, I guess, you’d have the usual 5e adventure that has the party killing time on Wednesday night gaming session “investigating” something until the main plot happens. I’m being a little harsh here, since this the way of 5e, but, you can’t call something a murder mystery where nothing you do matters.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is eighteen pages. More than enough to see some of the body locations, etc and get a sense for how wordy it is.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/391312/The-Queen-of-Spades?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 10 Comments

Holy Mountain Shaker

Posted on October 3, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Luka Rejec
Necrotic Gnome
OSE
Levels 5-6

Thunder and quake have come to the old town. Towers crumble, homes tumble, the quick become the dead. What omen could be more obvious? The Pharaoh Fish under the mountain is displeased. This God must be propitiated. Brave heroes must venture to buy the city’s salvation. At the very least, the Town Council needs to appear in control and send some ‘expert adventurers’ into the depths.

This 56 page adventure uses about forty pages to describe a pointcrawl dungeon with about twenty main locations and about sixty other minor locations. Each location is jam packed with things to do and see and uses the OSE house style in a decent manner … that could be improved upon. DENSE and a real fucking dungeoncrawl, the likes of which are seldom seen. If the DM can handle it.

WRONG! People are wrong about holy mountain. This is not your usual thing, I assert. It is instead Something New in adventuring. Something that nearly works great. It’s a pointcrawl dungeon. But, instead of it being a small little thing it’s HUGE, the designer likening it to a hexcrawl underground. And I think that’s accurate. When viewed through that lens a lot of what might be seen as flaws instead are strengths, given the nature of a hexcrawl.

There’s a degree of abstraction here that I think works well in a hexcrawl. For hexes are big and you can’t go on and on describing them. Similarly, the locations found in this are huge, so the text tells us, and the OSE house style is used to describe them. A style that fits in well to the abstracted nature of a hexcrawl.

The OSE house style gets some shit thrown at it. Using a keyword format, it uses bolded words to describe major features, and then, in parens after each bolded phrase/word, a few more words to help paint the pictures. Thus we get something like Hauntingly beautiful glade (swaying pines) Scarred Mountainside (blasted open) Yawning gap (entrance into mountain) Trickling stream (from gap) Crystal pool (fed by stream, filled with rubble, dead fish, glittering offerings.) I think that does a decent job of setting a scene, It takes work to make it work well, like any other format, to choose the right things to focus on and the right words to paint a pictures, and there can be misses. Following up on this style are some bullets with things like: Search pool (a few words about searching it and what you find) So, that’s the OSE style. It effectiveness depends, as always, by how much the designer has tortured themselves in editing it. I think it does a decent job in this adventure.

There’s a certain abstraction in this format. But, also, combined with a focus. And together they work. Take,for example, the local town. It’s done in one page. None of that usual crap about businesses. The DM can make up a fantasy town. No, in this we get a little bit about what are essentially five factions for the party to encounter. A second page is filled with rumors to add some colour. Half of a third is a timeline that further brings the town to life, with the actions of the folks inside of it coming in to focus as they deal with the threat of continued earthquakes from the mountain they all live under. It adds a tremendous amount of colour to the town, focusing on how the party interacts with the people and what they are doing on their own whale the party is about. A good thing to focus on in an adventure that adds much more th e playing of the adventure than a boring old list of businesses of a fantasy town that we’ve all seen a million times before. 

(I note, also, the art in this. I seldom mention art, but in this I do because, as when I always mention art, I think it compliments the rooms/encounters well. A cartoony style that is not childish, it reminds me a bit of Moebius. How’s that for a compliment?) 

What sets this apart, though, from normal adventures is the scale of the places explored. Underground, sure, but no mere 50×50 room. The spaces i this are HUGE. An underground river complex. A GIANT cavern and so on. The god fish, when you find him, IS A MILE LONG. So, we’re talking a scale that, while not quite a hex, has the same energy as exploring a hex. And this is where things in the adventure start to get complex.

If you search one of these areas for a couple of hours you can find some hidden things, usually a small area that you can further explore. And if you search for another two hours then maybe you can find another area to explore (There’s a six day timer in this adventure, so … search.) That means that each of the “rooms” in the pointcrawl usually has three or so other mini-chambers also associated with it. And ALL of them have a lot going on. This is where things get rough. There’s an attempt to keep each point to two pages. And, using the OSE style, that’s accomplished. But, also, there’s A LOT going on. And it CAN be hard to follow at times. Or, maybe, non-intuitive. I think in practice its probably going to be ok … but this is one of those rare things that I think I’d want to run before making a judgment on it. 

Just in that first place, the Hauntingly Beautiful Glade, you can search the pool, get all the gold in the pool ,or moved the rocks around in the pool. Searching reveals mummified scaled limbs, wearing gold rings and bracelets. Getting all the gold/limbs triggers an attack by some fish monsters as you completely loot the place. Moving the rocks around reveal drowned sarcophages, with and ancient drowned wight in red-gilded wrappings … and funerary offering with dark fish symbols.

But wait, there’s more! Searching reveal a path to a high hermitage, with old cottages ans graffiti and searching THEM reveals a note about a secret path up the mountain! Further exploration reveals the dim woods with hiding cultists in a camp, trying to catch new faith fanatics unawares. That shrine up the mountain path? A fountain with spring, pure, with holy water you can collect and an ancient fish alter that sacrificing two opens a secret way in to the mountain.

That’s a fuck ton! Plus, each location has it’s own wandering monster table of four entries to keep the party encountering things. And it’s own table of what happens when the mountain collapses at the end of the adventure … in a small of table of three ever worsening escalations. 

So, a lot, right?

Can you handle that? Your enjoyment of this is going to rest on that. I think you can run this right out of the box. Just crack it open, read the town, and go. And you’ll have a great adventure. I also think that if you read each area and really imagine it and get a feel for how it works together then you’ll have a much better adventure. A HUGE adventure. An adventure for which a timer almost doesn’t make sense at all, except, perhaps, to keep things fun back at town. 

The thing is PACKED. Dense. It does go a little heavy on the ruined technology civilization theme … which is saying something for someone as in to gonzo as I am. But, also, one note this is not. 

This is one of those rare things that I’m going to suggest you need to prep some before running it. That’s not something I recommend often. Usually I would just say to move on to the next adventure that you DONT need to prep much, if at all. But, this is something different. Almost a hex crawl but not quite. Something new. And I think that its worth exploring more. One of those rare things that it makes sense to dig in to. 

This is $7.50 at DriveThru. The previews is nine pages. You get to see that first room at the end of the preview, as well as the start of the next. It’s a decent preview. 


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/363966/Holy-Mountain-Shaker?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 5, Reviews, The Best | 17 Comments

Throne of Gondira

Posted on October 1, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Morten Braten
Xoth Publishing
5e
Levels 4-6

You have heard the wild tales of fabled Gondira, a city built by the sons of giants, with a palace of white marble and gates of beaten gold, now hidden by the jungle and haunted by white apes who walk upright like men. Can you penetrate the steaming jungles of the south to discover the lost city and bring back its treasures, or will you die before you can set eyes upon the throne of Gondira?

Working my way through requests.

This sixty page travelog of an adventure uses about forty pages to feature a small jungle region and a few dungeons, mostly in the city of the whip apes. It’s got a bland style, and focuses on the high level to a degree that I have no idea how one would actually run this.

I don’t like the Xoth adventures. They are too disconnected from their setting to make them interesting or able to run. They masquerade as sandboxes, but, rather than a sandbox adventure what this means in the Xoth context is that tend to be more of a travelog and/or regional setting. Abstracted, bland, and devoid of what’s needed to make an adventure actually run.

So, it’s another lost city/jungle/ape adventure. The Appendix N has a strong hold over folks. And is Yet Another Failure in the genre. It stars rather strong, once all of the pudding text is ignored, with a brief diary entry of an explorer. Not too specific and and the explorers feelings come through rather well. It’s both a hook and a brief “map”, so to speak, of how to get to the area i question. It is a standpoint column of text. It mimics a kind of dryer explorer diary, perfect for its intended usage, although the dry style continues in the rest of the adventure.

The rest of the adventure is … meh. We’ve got a small regional. It’s got some “civilized” areas with the usual assortment of jungle tribesmen and a few minor temples with a lake monster out front or oracle living inside. It’s also maddednning in how the regional areas are referenced. The map provided has some names on it and they don’t always matchup with the headings used later in the adventure. Is the Land of Kash on the map the same as the mud man temple? And whats with the rando insertion of the rebel tribesmen, what appears to be an event in an section otherwise devoted to describing locations? But, also, it’s after the “bland) wandering table … but doesn’t appear on the wandering table? 

The main attraction is the City of the White Apes. A small overview and city map, and several dungeons underneath it. The maps for the dungeons are done well in some cases, being a  little larger and having a more organic feel to them. I don’t mean caves, I mean a kind of flowing of the passages and corridors that feels like something some people dug out … at least as much as the map diagram, proper, is concerned.

But there’s not enough specificity. It’s almost as if the designer has some kind of mental block in providing the sort of organization and text required to run it, all in the name of “Sandbox.” The white apes, in the city, don’t really come across at all. You occasionally get a chance of one beig at the city gates, or overseeing the slave pens, but it comes across as an empty city. Maybe thats on purpose, I guess, but it’s SO hesitant to mention the apes, or them running around, that the entire place feels empty. And, no word on what the apes, intelligent, do to respond to intruders. Or if they capture the party, or anything like that. Can you just walk right up the palace gates and go in? That seems wrong, given what the text implies in other places. But that’s how the text comes across. As if you just wander in to a lost city, go up the palace, and start your typical dungeon exploration. But it implies that they are around. Kind of like thatSnake Riders of the Arandondo adventure in which there was only snake rider in an adventure the heavily implied they were everywhere but never mentioned them. Not quite that bad, but close.

That’s a pretty big problem. At the same level of issue is the text style used to describe the dungeons. It’s bland, and alternated from “unneeded” to “excessive text with backstory.” You get text, on the one hand, that is “This is a natural quay where canoes can easily lay to.” Inspired to run the room? Why is the text even there in the first place? You don’t need it. It’s bland and nothing is going on. And, yes, not everything needs to be an actual encounter, there’s a place for some smaller/empty rooms in any adventure, but there’s too much of it. “THis chamber is full of dirt, broken pottery and skittering vermin” or “An anaconda is coiled up in this chamber.” There’s nothing to these. It’s at the level of a minimalistic dungeon description, but it doesn’t even have an evocative writing to it.

Contrasting with that are the LONG sections of text, equally bland. Backstory. Motivations. And a lot of padding with if/then clauses breaking up boring descriptions. It is perhaps heartbreaking that section of Howard and other Appendix N texts are scattered throughout, with things like “Out of the darkness of a corner rose a swaying shape; a great wedge-shaped head and an arched neck were outlined against the moonlight.” Not exactly a room description entry, but, it shows all the signs of the evocative writing that the text of the adventure, the actual room entries, are missing.

The entire thing is bland. Written at a level of detail, and a style of text, that robs it all all emotion. Devoid of the hard editing that makes a description terse, easy to scan and run, and evocative. It’s a textbook example of something that might be run to read, and imagine but not actually run.

This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages and you get to see some of the room descriptions and so on. It’s a good preview, in the sense that you can see the content thats important to help you make a purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/322051/Throne-of-Gondira?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 10 Comments

The Magonium Mine Murders

Posted on September 28, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 

By James Holloway
Gonzo History Project
OSE
Level -  No One Seems To Care Anymore (4)

Strange noises in the mine. Bandits on the roads. A counterfeiting scheme, a crooked prizefight racket, a rebellion in the making … and a cold-blooded murder. Times are hard in the Halbek Valley, and your player characters are right in the middle of it all.

This 28 page adventure details a small area with a few things going on … including a MUUUUURRRder! It’s calling itself a “cluebox” to point out that its a non-linear mystery. I’m just gonna call it an adventure. It’s got the right ideas, it just needs to figure a few more things out before it is able to be something I would run.

There’s a proper amount of detail, and way to organize the information, for each type of adventure. Traditional room/key works great for an exploratory dungeon and less well for describing the businesses in town, for example. When you are doing a social adventure then the format and the way you organize the information for the DM must be changed yet again. What the designer is trying to do is be able to facilitate the DM running the adventure … and that means organizing the information in different ways for different goals. 

And that’s what this adventure gets right. It understands the more fluid and open-ended nature of an investigation/mystery. And thus the designation of a “cluebox” … I could do without the term but I understand the why of using it … this is a sandbox. As most things should be. 🙂  It’s got its own problems, but, fundamentally, its got the right style, the right way of organizing the information for play. It just falls down a bit on the execution.

We’ve got a town. Two twins actually, old town and new town. With two sheriffs, once for each. And a mine. Worked by miners. And by forced prison of war labour. Some miners are getting killed in side the mine. Ought oh! And the POWs are about to rebel … they got a tribal mixed in with them and are hoarding weapons in hiding. And the mine chief just got murdered! And there are bandits in the woods that have just gotten more violent. And there’s a  counterfeiting ring underway with ties to the mine. And there’s a dude in massive debt cause of illegal shit and he owes money and someone else wants their money. And there’s some prizefighting giong on … along with some fixin. I don’t know … I think I hit all of the major subplots? 

So, (A) that’s a fuck ton going on! I love it! And (B), you NEED a lot going on in one of these. There needs to be things to figure out. Everything can’t be a gun laying on the table. Anyway …

We get an overview of all the little subplotty things. Cool. Now I’m oriented to the information to come! Then there’s a little section on getting started. Meh. This ia weak part of the adventure. These are, essentially, the hooks. And they imply things. The two sheriff thing? It appears as a four sentence hook. Thats all you’re ever gonna get on it. It’s GOOD. But, also, not always straightforward to working it in. And this is the problem with all of the things going on. They seem a little hard to stumble on. I guess the mine, as the central point of things, might lead to most of them, but, still, it’s a little tenuous. There needs to be just a little more. Instead of the two sheriffs thing being a hook, for example, we need a couple of thrown in events in town. Maybe a page of town events that include things like the sheriff. Or a list of themes for the DM to hit, like, “Im telling the other sheriff!” and so on. Something a little more explicit. Hot a railroad. Not hand holding. But a little more local colour. 

We then get a brief little overview of each of the main locations. I thin each of the towns take one page, so, not excessive in any way. A few random things, a local business of import, and thats it. Its just about the right amount of detail. Just about. Again, the local color is weak. Yes, there a small table for each location of encounters, and gossip if appropriate, but, it just doesn’t frame the situation. There IS an attempt to frame things. For New Town we get “Once a small village, now a party spot for miners, filled to the brim with sutlers, gamblers, swindlers, pickpockets, palm-readers, prizefighters, quacksalvers and drunks. Everything is pricey.” So, you get where the designer wants to go. But you’re not inspired. You want to provide something that makes people think “Deadwood” from the Tv show, or some such. You want something that the DM can hang their hat on, and the relatively weak description given just isn’t it. Nor is it represent for any of the locales. But, also, the level of detail for the towns IS correct and yes, there SHOULD be a framing. The framing is just not too good at doing its job.

And, those sites? The ones without a good framing? They are generally at the correct level of detail. The mines don’t try to map things out fully, just a general cross-section is given with some notes. Great. Perfect. Thats what you need. But, then, when you get to an actual dungeon location (and there are a couple) you get the same level of detail. The designer doesn’t understand that the rules of the game have changed. You now need a little more detail. We’re no longer riffing at a “mine” level, we’re riffing at a “room two” level and thus the need for a little more evocative information.

Finally, get a section on the NPC’s. About three per page, with a little drawing, so they are not overstaying. A little overview that is generally a sentence long. What they know and their Suspicious Activity. With key phrases bolded. I get it. I don’t thin it works. Or, rather, I think you need more here. I think you need a true overview reference sheet of a page with the key sht on it to remind you, to reference during play. And the bolded shit don’t work, i think, Maybe bullets. You need it super clear. Finally, the Suspicious activity section? I don’t know about this … I support it, in principal, but, you need a way to introduce it in to the play, and I’m not sure that What They Know for one person matches up to the Suspicious Activity of another. Without it, how do you know what to introduce? 

At 28 pages this is a pretty efficient adventure for what’s going on. I can find nary an example of useless padding of text. It’s all relevant. To a degree that is unusual in an adventure. The framing overviews of the areas, essentially evocative writing for them, is a miss. I can understand that, evocative writing is hard, but, also, it needs to be there. Whats more of an issue for me if the NPC summaries and the hooks and what they know/suspicious activity shit. This should all be the heart of the adventure. The asking around. Poking about. Plying people with drinks, and so on. The adventure needs just a little more in this area. I don’t know, maybe, three more pages in total? But focused, on brining those aspects to life. In hooking things together more and allowing the DM to quickly reference “side shit going on” in a casual way during play. 

So, I don’t hate this. It got the basics down for a style of adventure that is hard to do. But, also, I’m not running it. It’s gonna be too much work to prep the way it is and is a little dry for me.

This is $7 at DriveThru. Ain’t no preview Or fucking level range! Fuck you man, put both of them there so we can know what were buying before we buy it!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/406873/The-Magonium-Mine-Murders?1892600

(Also, there’s a little bit of “Magical Society” shit thats present that seems out of place. Why have magic tokens or a magical ore? I don’t think you need either?)

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 4 Comments

The Toxic Wood

Posted on September 26, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Lazy Litch
Lazy Litches Loot
OSE
Level ?

Lazy Litches Loot

OSE

Level ?

You have been hired by a secretive council of wizards, who refuse to meet in person with you, to rescue the survivors of Mugwort – a town which was thought to have been destroyed and lies deep within The Toxic Wood. The Wood is corrosive and the air is not safe to breath there, so the wizards have given you a magical orb which will create a safe dome of air around you. The orb must be fed with fuel containing life force to continue operating properly. They have also gifted each of you a less effective necklace which will create a temporary small bubble of clean air around your head as an emergency measure. The Wood became noxious a couple of years ago after a dragon known as Ion moved in. You will have to navigate to Mugwort without Ion noticing if you are to conduct a successful evacuation.

This 32 page digest hexcrawl features a forest with an otherworldly vibe and several factions and LOTS of fucked up shit going on in it. I dig the fucked up shit. I hate the lack of keys and the lack of focus for the hex descriptions. And, all you fuckwits upset by TODAYS YUTS got nothing to worry about; Lazy Litch appears to have sold out and not included any content that would offend your delicate belief facade.

This is a hexcrawl, I don’t do a good job reviewing them. Also, So, yeah, we all know Gamma World is my fav, right? And I really dig the Chtorr series? And Annihilation? Yeah? Well guess the fuck what … this thing hits all of those. You get sent off in to the toxic wood to free rescue a town and wander through what is essentially an area so mutated as to appear chtorroformed. And I dig that! The entire places is FUCKED UP, in a good way, and this is heavily complimented by the art, which has a sort of vaguely Kingdom Death vibe to it. You know I don’t usually mention art. I feel it seldom compliments the adventure. But, here, it helps lend to the sort of organic gothic vibe … almost with an art nouveau thing going on, that the environment has going on. 

Ok, so. This shit is weird. You need to know that. I’m serious in that it has a Chtorr or Annihilation vibe. Like, straight out of those. If you want an exploration in a non-familiar place then this is it. It’s better than those Paul Keigh adventures that Geoffrey put out. It’s more complete. More viscerally different. And yet its familiar enough that if you squint you are walking through the fungi forest that is typical in an RPG adventure. It’s just a really REALLY well done fungi forest … that has few fungi. 🙂 So, not really gonzo at all, at least how the term is typically used. 

It’s got weird plant life. It’s got weird creatures moving through it. And it’s got weird encounters. A knight, in full armor, hanging from vines, pierced by thrown, still alive, dreaming. And a useful tool. A witches house moving about, Baba Yaga style, on, like, vines from the bottom. Two insect sisters, one of whom has captured the witch in the house, who is key to stopping things. The village you are trying to reach, surrounded by a temporary bubble, three factions inside. Four if you count the solitary wizard keeping the place running. 

This place is so fuck up/interesting … but not completely so, that I’m having trouble describing why its good. There’s this tower in the forest with two trees growing through the roof. As you approach voices from you magic orb, keeping you alive in the toxic wood, warn you away. On the ground floor is gelatinous mass, full of eyeballs, that ALL turn away from you as you enter. If you ignore it you can pass. If you fuck with it, or address it, it gets pissed off. DONT LOOK AT ME! Going upstairs to the other floors gets you more weirdness. Until you reach the roof and discover a secret related to the Order of Six Circles. 

Who the fuck are they? No clue. There’s a LOT like that in here. A bunch of names and things thrown in. It’s fucking magnificent. Maybe this is elaborated on in another book, but, here, by itself, its perfect. It communicates mystery and wonder. Enigma. Who the fuck are they? What the fuck are they doing? It’s EXACTLY what you do to get peoples minds running away on them. Perfect!

I don’t know. I still am not communicating things well. Look. The encounters are fucking awesome. The flora and fauna are fucking wonderful and creepy as all fuck. The art showcased on the product page, is some of the weakest. I wish the new monsters pages were shaed. Or the NPC pages. Short, terse descriptions and a drawing that communicates a bit like Scrap did in DCO. But, none of the abstractness that offends the more delicate consumers amongst us. And, that’s an important point. It’s all relatable, or maybe just a bit unrelatable, but not too far over the line. It’s not abstracted. Each of the hexes gets about a half a page of description, a few more for the major ones. So, as the DM, you WILL be riffing on things and adding yourself to it, in the grand tradition of a hex crawl … even if there IS a little plot along the way. (I did mention this thing is FULL of factions, right? Or, maybe, “mostly self interested groups and people” would be a better term for it.)

Ok, so, spoiler, I’m gonna Regert this thing. It’s too flawed for me, but, I think for many of you, you’re going to enjoy it. Let’s talk flaws.

“This hexcrawl adventure focuses on game-able content and being easy to use at the table. It is graphic and art heavy and utilizes a lot of random tables to make it easier for GMs to run with minimal prep.” Uh huh. In my best Project Farm imitation: We’re gonna test that! 

The fucking thing is keyed wonky. Meaning there ARE no keys. You get a two page hex map with icons in every hex. Go look up the icon on the map to another page that has a reference to it. Find the name, lets say “Mugwump Village”, then go find Mugwump village in the text. This thing needs keys in addition to names or a whole fuck ton of cross references to page numbers. It’s fucking difficult. Further, the tree symbols, that cover the map, all kind of merge together and each is a different environment. GO look up your specific tree hex symbol and find it on the table to describe what it looks like and get the wanderer table. That shit just aint working for me. It needs to flow easily and its not doing that, Lazy Litch.

And the plant life table, that adds so much? I don’t have any clue how it is supposed to show up or be worked in to the adventure. I mean, “random plant” shows up on a couple of wanderer tables, but not enough to justify the amount spent on the plants … I must be missing something?

And speaking of missing something … the hex map is huge. 20×15 or so. You can explore one hex a day or travel three hexes a day. In twelve days things come to head and there will no longer really be asolution to the toxic wood. And thats after you’ve mutated a few times. I am more than a little skeptical that the travel/explore shit works the way Litch thinks it will … the ties between the various important locations are too tenuous … as to be nonexistent, that I think you canfind shit and/or actually “travel.” Litch has to be making some assumption about playstyle that is not being communicated. 

Finally, the text is a pain to dig through. This isn’t the ArtPunk Morg Borg nonsense. It’s something else. A hexcrawl should have a little section of text that sets up a situation. And this does that, to be sure. But, lso, it goes on just a little too long. It’s using a traditional paragraph format and that’s just a little too much text. And the font i a little too small. And the backgrounds a little too busy in places. It’s all just a little too much to reference during play in a meaningful manner. And then integrate in the environment? I don’t think so. 

So, there are some issues with the mechanics of running this, I think, both in how its to be run and the formatting used to facilitate communication from the text to the DM. But, the environment proper? Really kick ass. It does a GREAT job of communicating that weirdness of an environment. Annihilation, Chtorr … it’s familiar and yet OFF, by a lot. A lot of you are going to really like this.

This is $6 at DriveThru. It’s easily worth that. Ain’t no fucking preview though. Or level range recommendation. Boo! A lazy litch indeed!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/407138/The-Toxic-Wood?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | 14 Comments