tenfootpole.org

By Curtis Lyon

Three Sages Games

Level 3

When a chance encounter on the road turns out to have a more nefarious story behind it than meets the eye, you’ve got Gobs o’ Trouble! Are you up to the challenge?

This twelve page adventure describes, like, I don’t know, three encounters? I can pick out something nice here or there, in twelve pages, but it’s still twelve pages for three encounters. 

Am I up for the challenge? Well, I don’t know. Well, I do know; probably not. I mean, sure, I’ll match the energy at the table, but, a short con game with three encounters? I mean, probably no. What are the odds tha the DM and the adventure are going to be ok? I mean, it’s mostly the DM, right? Still, I mean, no. 

We’re starting out strong with that cover! Not my style, but, hey dud is carrying a human head tied to his saddle, so, Rock On! No level range anywhere on the cover, or in the production description. So, Fuuuuuuuccccckkkkkk Yoooooooou number one.

Title page, and other filler. Let’s see … oh, a disclaimer! “This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters, and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only. Reader discretion is advised.” So, you know, I almost didn’t make it to the adventure, having been advised that I may not be able to handle it. This fucking disclaimer … look, I’m not against trigger warnings for some serious shit, but you start slapping them on with “Warning: D&D adventure may contain a D&D adventure” then I start my eye rolls. 

We start by meeting a farm family on the road, who had obviously had the shit kicked out of them. Bleeding, dirty, exhausted, etc. Mom, holding a pitchfork, calls out “Well met travelers! Do you have any medical supplies?” I love to trot out possible worlds theory, and I’m going to do it again here. In NO possible world does this fucking happen. It’s just forced dialog. “Medical supplies?” seriously? No, it’s some kind of wary hesitancy, a plea for help, screaming and crying kids. Fucking make it viscereal man, not some abstracted and distant vignette that is a mockery of true emotion. 

Whatever, I guess I knock adventures these days for not bringing forth true emotion. Meh. Also, it lasts a fucking page. Tofucking tell us that goblins raided their farm and took it over. They held them off and killed a few, so, you know, a party of threes should be able to handle it, I guess. Also, if you kill the family you earn the enmity of the gods. You get no reward, but do get 300xp for helping them. So, you know, that’s worth it. I mentioned the enforced morality, right? Always good to see in adventure. How about we get the quest and then ALSO kill the family? How very Russian!

Off to the farm where you fight some goblin. On no map. No tactical fun. Just kill twelve goblins. I mean, still takes a fucking page to put twelve goblins on the farm. *sigh*. No real treasure here either, but there is a magic sword, with inscription! “Lemja: To strike and maim.” Hey, that’s nice! . You can track them back to their lair, since they got no loot. I can tell this is gonna be an XP poor adventure …

Tracking them back you see some tromped down vegetation. You get attacked by an eight headed hydra. !!!!!! That will wake you the fuck up in the morning! Do do get 3k in gold from this, in its lair, which contains a single good line, where the loot is “mixed in with the remains of

its victims (mostly in the form of bones).” Nice there!

On we go to the goblin source, a cave with two hobgoblins outside. They fight to the death, as do all hobgoblins, the adventure notes, so, you know, no morale checks here. No map of the cave, or anything really, just that there is a cave, two stand outside and that there are eight total with a magic portal inside. It, also, has a nice line “The rotting corpses of a dozen Goblins litter the surrounding area.” Otherwise, just another page to describe something useless.

There’s nothing here but text. Three encounters in twelve pages? Even at a page per I don’t see how you got to twelve? And, no tactical maps, as one might expect in such a short adventure. (I don’t love tactical mas, but I can see how sneaking up on a farm and taking out sentries, etc, could be a little mini-adventure in and of itself.) There’s a line or three, here, that shows that the designer is not devoid of imagination. The tromped down hydra vegetation, the sword, the bodies outside the lair. But there’s just NOTHING HERE. I don’t give a fuck that it’s labeled a short adventure. This is not that.

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is two pages and shows the title page. Woo Hoo! That’s certainly enough to tell if you want to buy the adventure. You can read that disclaimer through!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/149323/Gobs-o-Trouble?1892600

By M. Greis
Greis Games
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 3-5

In the ruins left by the wizard Kataphrasis are left strange artifacts from the age when the stars fell from the sky. In the dim corridors inhabited by foul goblin raiders and their gnoll allies are left strange magics and few explorers are left umtouched after exploring the depths. It all begins with a caravan plundered by goblins and a rescue mission to free the prisoners of the goblins but from the within the dark, deeper than the goblins care to go something calls to the curious – and this may be the undoing of the adventurers for magics of ancient wizards are better left alone.

This 33 page adventure describes a three level dungeon with about 25 rooms. It’s got some creative encounter details, and is also dense enough, with enough text, that I don’t care about the details.

Kind of a strange one, this one. At it’s heart is a standard “dungeon with some humanoinoids in it who don’t control the entire place, the rest of it being a ‘normal’ dungeon.” It’s a strange one because even though it does many things right, the information density is so high that I think it gets quite wordy and hard to scan and run at the table.

We’ve got the usual assortment of iffy hooks, including getting hired. The start is the party finding a destroyed caravan, along, perhaps with “Terruce, the young local they recently met at an inn, who wanted to be an adventurer and therefore took a job as a caravan guard.” I’m always up for a little mangled body of a local youth energy. It’s that kind of detail that pervades the adventure. That’s great specificity. The actual descriptions of the various things in the dungeon may not be stellar, but, the concept behind them? Absolutely. 

The dungeon, proper, starts with the party seeing a large namd of gnolls in front of the dungeon entrance, being sent away by a group of goblins and being told to return at sunrise. Thus you’ve got a timer, the return of the gnoll warband, to act as a force driving the party forward. (Along with, presumably, the rescue of some prisoners obviously taken from the caravan.) This start is all supported by a small table of six rumors that goes something like “Some herb gatherers” and “an ancient ruined fortress that nobody should ever go to.” The rumors have their heart in a good place, even if the writing is more than a little cumbersome in places … which is a great summary of the entire adventure. 

“Wagons are emptied and overturned, and guard  peppered by goblins’ arrows or ripped to pieces by savage gnolls. Among the dead are goblins and gnolls.“ So, sure. Empty, overturned, peppered with arrows. And less great, this read-aloud, telling us they are gnolls and goblins. Errr, sorry, SAVAGE gnolls. Its got more than a little taste of high brown/flauting in my mouth. Technically, you can see what they were going for, even though they didn’t reach there in a natural way.

The individual room entries can be long, a column or more not being uncommon. Green text telling (I just typed repent instead of green. This is not an autocorrect situation. Hmmmm, thats weird … the tribulation has begun?) us the room name. A grey text books of a couple of paragraphs with read-aloud text. “Here sits seven goblins swaying from drunkenness amidst dice, coins and empty wine bottles. The place reeks with stale wine, coal and goblin sweat.” The end of the room read-aloud, there, again is trying hard. Reeking. Stench, sweat, wine. Sure. But the description is more than a little off. Here Sits? Really? Then we’ve got a paragraph description the seven goblins in the room and their drunk attack modifiers. Then a yellow boxed text with some treasure details. Then a paragraph each for the vampire and portcullis in the room (starting wth thos bolded words to make finding them easier) and then a pink boxed text section on bribing your way in. It’s busy. Very busy. 

Is it wrong? Meh …. It certainly feels the fuck wrong. Maybe from how busy it is. Maybe from the length, or what it implies. Combined with the somewhat cumbersome writing, the grammar and sentence structure, and youtube a section of  text, for each room, that feels like a struggle to wade through. I look at it and just sigh. I close my eyes a moment to gird my loins for handling whats to come. Not exactly what you’re looking for in running something.

And the map … the map is really strange. Three levels, if a room has a 30’ high ceiling then it shows up on all three levels of the map. Isolated from the other rooms for the upper two 10’ sections, for example. This sort of multi-level map details should be great but it comes across as confusing.I had to keep returning to the text over and over again to be like “where the fuck does this room connect to?”

And yet it also does so many things right. The map, multi level complexity, is great. Its just a  poort implementation. And individual encounter elements being great, like the campfire attack details, or bribing your way in, or any of what feels like twenty other nice little details and specificity in the dungeon. One room, with a weak/collapsing ceiling, is supported by a sweet little table of a kin of escalating room/ceiling collapse type. I ike it, a lot. The bear claw goblin tribe gets no real “bear claw” descriptions, but, sure, what the hell, why not have each of them holding a cruller? 

It’s got great specificity, but it’s handled in such a cumbersome way tha tits hard for me to do anything like recommending it. And i feel like an ass for saying that *also, because I think there are some EASL issues) but, ultimately, I don’t want to run it. I don’t want to fight what I’m running to run it. Even though I’m not sure that’s the case.

This is $3 at DriveThru.The preview is six pages and shows a couple of dungeon rooms, so, good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/391622/Dragon-Teeth-of-Kataphrasis–a-B-X-adventure?1892600

By Stephen Ashmore
Sword and Tower Games
OSR
Level 5?

The Tomb of Kor is a legendary tomb of the great king Kor, never before opened, until now. Your players will venture into this legendary tomb that robbers have recently opened, inside they will find secret doors, traps, and treasure; and may awaken mummies who have been sealed away for centuries.

Kor was man!
I mean, he was a mummy man
Or maybe he was just a mummy
but he was still Kor!
Kor!

This seventeen page adventure uses nine pages to describe an eight room tomb with a mummy. Two encounters. Lot’s of boring traps. And a writing style aimed at two years olds. Yes sir, it’s a banner day in the old brych place, full of the fucking dreck that makes life worth living!

Let us talk my loathing of the hallway trap. Random. Out of nowhere. Take damage. Or, I mean, you can search. And slow the fucking game down to the crawl. Yeah yeah, I know you disagree. I’ve never seen it NOT slow the game down. You know what else is fun? A room with six pit traps in it ! In fact, there are pit traps everywhere in this place, with five more making an appearance in other places! Weeee! Pit trap! We get a paragraph up front at the start (or, actually, three) telling up how to run a pit trap! You can search and find one! Blah blah blah. Roll a search to find one. Does it find ALL of the pit traps in the room? It doesn’t say but I presume not. I’d be shitty as a player. But, as a DM, I’m shitty because of the text. Ready kids? “Traps and other room mechanics are handled in the same way. The room determines all skill checks’ difficulty levels, including finding secret doors, dodging a trap, or investigating something. For example, in room one, the DC is 14. That means to find or disarm a trap, it requires a roll of 14. It also means that to find a secret door a roll of 14 is required.” Congrats! Now you know how to run a pit trap! Just like every other trap. Just like every trap you’ve EVER run. Good thing the designer was there to tell us how to do it!                 

But wait, there’s more! We are also told that “… two secret doors can be found in this room, as well as several traps. Floor traps are small, five-foot by five-foot pit traps that are triggered by any weight above a handful of pounds leading to a drop of around twenty feet. Ceiling traps spill large quantities of debris, sharpened quartz stones, and various sharpened pieces of bone when anything steps on a pressure plate on the ground below. Both kinds of traps deal 2D6 damage, or half if a reflex or dexterity save is successful.” Yes sir, the text repeats! Yeah! Now I’m not dumb anymore! I’ve been told how to breathe AND then had it reinforce! An excellent use of space and a text budget!

No? Ok, how about this: “How the adventure works: Each room of the dungeon is listed separately, with a description that should be read to the players.” Yes, the designer has told us how room keys work! No one, in the history of the fucking world, needs to be fucking told how a room key works. Jesus H fucking Chris. Maybe, also, you can tell me how to count to eight so I can follow that as well? I mean, what the fuck were you thinking? This? Thiis is good adventure design?! This is whatyou dreamed of doing and stayed awake at night pouring over in your head as youlay in bed? How to tell people what an adventure key looks like and how to use it?                                 

“ To increase their chances of finding a secret door, allow extra rolls for searching different areas of the rooms. Perhaps a failed roll can reveal the location of the door, but not how to open it.”

IE: do not play D&D. 

“Searching the room can lead to treasure with a successful search check. Roll 1D6 on the following table to determine the treasure. Each character can search one time.”

IE: life is fair. I want to puke. (That may not be the adventure, I had eight shots of fireball and three long islands at hte bar last night. Hmmm, or, maybe its a combination of the adventure AND the liquor? Whatever; I’m blaming the adventure.)

The adventure backstories. “Brought here at great expense is the Throne of Kor How do you know this? You don’t. How does it improve the players experience to know this? It doesn’t. How does it help the DM to run the room to have this information presented to them? It doesn’t. “The room has been disturbed recently” How do you know this? You don’t. 

Here’s a great example of some room text. It embodies the spirit of the entire adventure: “Pulling the players in: There are a few ways to position Kor’s Tomb as a hook for players. First, the king of the land, or some other ruler, hires them to chase down the tomb robbers who have broken into the Tomb. Second, perhaps the players come across the tomb while exploring the desert. Third, the players could be associated with the tomb robbers themselves, arriving to help their friends. There are certainly many other ways to draw the players to the tomb, it should be made clear that the tomb is famous for being undisturbed, full of traps and legendary treasure.” That paragraph says nothing. NOTHING. It’s just words. Filler words. Words that add absolutely nothing to the adventure. No specificity. NOTHING. Nothing to work with at all. And that is the adventure room after room of that nothing. 

The tomb entrance was covered by a large boulder of marble, too heavy for most to move.” and then in the read aloud “it has never been moved until now. The tomb robbers who entered before have not been seen since.” Note the contradictions. 

It’s just crap.

Did I mention all the, long, read-aloud is in italics?

Save yourselves, my children. 

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages. It shows you the traps page and a couple of rooms, so, good preview. Enjoy the fuck out of it.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/398136/The-Tomb-of-Kor-A-PocketSized-Adventure?1892600

By Cameron Shanton
Shanton Productions
OSE
Levels 1-3

The Laboratory of Ord has within it a self-contained mystery for players to piece together and solve, centered around the maddened sorcerer Thorngage Ord. Rumors of mass disappearances have plagued the local countryside, and many believe that Ord is to blame.

This nine page adventure uses four pages to describe the eleven rooms, on two levels, of … an alchemist lair! I was prepared to hate it and instead just merely dislike it. The writing is ineffective, the environment mostly boring, and, overall, more than a little confusing.

Who, today, troubles my weary slumber?

First, there’s no context for this adventure. You see that marketing blurb? That’s what you get. That’s ALL of the context you get. Otherwise we just get a “room 1” start. This is after a boring table of wanderers and one for random loot. Both of which filled me with dread. “Oh no! Will I be expected to roll on each room to determine what’s inside?” Well, kind of, but, no, there ARE encounters and treasure in this other than the stuff on the random tables. So, major crisis averted. But, also, no context on the dungeon. A stairwell leading down? I guess so, since that’s what outside of room one. But, nothing else. I don’t need a lot here, but a single sentence noting the dungeon environment, it’s entrance, etc would have gone a LONG way to helping a mood here. But, no, just what’s in the marketing blurb. Again, not two pages of backstory. But, fuck, even G1 had SOMETHING for the DM to work with.

The map is two levels. It’s kind of “manorly” in tha the rooms are essentially opening in to each other. No creature reactions for an environment that small. And, the map is rather generic. A large hole in the floor in room one, indicates the text. Is the hole on the map? No. A curtain sealing off an alcove in room three. On the map? You know better than that! Pillars and staircases are the extent of what we get. Even though the hole down IS the way forward. This is a homemade map, it looks like, not a Dyson affair. Put some fucking shit on it, man, to help a DM out! I don’t need every table and chair, but help me out!

Descriptions? How about we use the magic items as an example? BOOK items, for the most part, as boring as any book items listing. Also, how about “a strange +1 dagger, with an inlaid opal.” This is the height of descriptive text. An inlaid opal. What the fuck does “strange” even mean in this context? Are yu going to tell the players its strange? When they ask “How?” then what will you answer? “It’s strange.” Yes, please, do that. There are two things goin on here. First, the word strange is meaningless. You want to provide a description that makes the PLAYERS think “hmmm, thats strange.” Whats part of the value you are adding as a designer. You need to do more then just roll some random monster and put them on the map. You need to bring some things to life. Use all of the joy present in the english language to make inspire the DM so they can then inspire their players with wonder and awe. Strange is not that. Strange is a conclusion. “Evil looking” is another common thing that designers do. Don’t do that. Provide a description that makes me think Oooo, thats fucking evil!” Second, beef that shit up. Gimme a description, or an effect, that’s more than just a roll on the table of magic items. Make me WANT it. Make it special. No, not in The CHosen One way, but just something to make the fucking thing stand out. Players LUSTafter magic items. Its part of the reward for playing. Make them happy to be here and to risk life and limb. With an over-powered item? No. Just with SOMETHING. ANYTHING. Make it fucking mundane. I don’t care. Just put SOME effort in to it.

I mentioned confusing. How now brown cow?

Room one tells us “The dungeon is crawling with the ancient bones of old priests and people who fled here.” What does this mean? Literally? Figuratively? It’s never mentioned again. It’s not mentioned in any concrete way, or even alluded to, after this sentence.What am I to do with that? Do I take it as a description of the current room? Of the entire environment? Even if I did so, it’s a pretty boring description. There’s no specificity. Bring it to life! … and let me know what the fuck is actually going on in rooms. Especially every other room which imply, heavily, they are clean.

“A lever at the end of the hallway seems to control something unseen” Yes. Wonderful. That’s what levers in hallways do. I’m not even sure how this works. I think maybe it controls gas in a nearby room and not in the hallway? Not to mention the padding.

“There are four Normal Humans standing idly huddled in the bottom corner, breathing loudly in unison and concealing daggers. See Monsters, in Old-School Essentials Undeadnormal human” Ok, so, I’m guessing these are zombies? Another entry has four normal humans in it, without mentioning they are zombies. I don’t know anymore. I don’t cARE.

I think I’m done caring. I’m done seeing the good in things. All I see is a de rigeur attempt, and a poor one at that, at creating eleven rooms.

Hey, you know what? Let’s do all this shit all over again tomorrow!

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. It shows you the first eight rooms, so, good preview. AND it puts the level range in the product description. Most don’t. Nice job.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/392565/The-Laboratory-of-Ord?1892600

Is this a review? No. Why should I try if no one cares to?

By Christian Blair
Self Published
Generic
Low Levels

The Mysterious Witch is an adventure designed for low level players, for use in any fantasy generic-system TTRPG. This adventure is themed around dark magic, mystery and corruption. Exploration and dangers await players as they travel into a forsaken village among the woods, besieged by undead creatures and horrors. The village asks for help to find the culprit, but the actual truth is more complicated, and beneath the dark veil, a sad reality awaits.

This seven page adventure features a five room dungeon. And small glade to explore. It’s generic, in the abstracted way, rather than in a system neutral way. Well, it’s that also, but, the adventure is more of an outline, devoid of anything interesting that would be useful to the DM in a meaningful way.

I think system agnostic adventures have a lot of potential. At least, system agnostic adventures of a certain type. You’ve got the ones that try to stat something using a “universal” system, usually the older fold who got traumatized by The Game Wizards lawyers. Then you’ve got my favorite type of system agnostic adventure, the ones that are really just an adventure without stats or mechanics to speak of. I mean, sure, a small mechanic or here, but, generally the designer trusts the DM to do what they need to to run the adventure, and maybe stats things for BX or something. This is, I think, the way most people run adventures anyway. You take something for some system, probably not your own, and do a kind of conversion on the fly. Maybe monster stats ahead of time but the rest is on the fly. I really like this sort of thing and I think it has a lot of potential. I really don’t care about balance or mechanics in my adventures, that’s what I’m there for. I’m in this for a decent environment for the party to explore an dplay in, some fun situations and so on, and you don’t need mechanics for that. Then there’s the third type of system agnostic adventure. The kind that is all too common. The one that is essentially an outline. Abstracted content that is not too specific. Almost minimalism. And usually, as in this case, minimalism that is expanded and padded out. Booo!

So, villagers are going missing. Like, ALOT of villagers. There’s not much information on that, almost none at all. They suspect undead? But also, they suspect a witch and know where she lives and want you to go get her. This is the first abstraction. Not many villagers and no real story to tell of the abductions. Or the undead. Nothing really at all. Just what I typed above. Yes, absolutely, it’s up to the DM to fill in things and bring a game to life, but, also, the designer needs to give them the tools to do that. And just saying that there have been a lot of abductions and they think undead might be invoved is not enough. You need some terrified looks. Boarded up windows. Some personal tales from people. You need to set the VIBE for the DM to then riff further on. And this don’t do that.

“Once the layers reach the clearing they will find themselves surrounded by four ruined stone houses and a dry well.” Note the padding. “They will find themselves surrounded by.”  and “once they reach the clearing.” My old quantum example I thinks makes the best point about this, but, whatever. This is a conversational style. That pads things out. There is a clearing with four ruined stone houses and a dry well. We then get a description of the dry well. “The dry well has an object hidden at the bottom. It is a dungeon map that reveals the witch’s last location”. Again, padded out They find a hidden object. No, They find a map. And, to boot, it’s boring as fuck. “That reveals the witches last known location.” This is an outline. There is no specificity. It’s an abstraction description devoid of any life. Going further we get the same sort of descriptions for the first house and the big house. Then a paragraph tell us tat amongst the ruins of “a house’ there’s a giant creature feasting on a dead body. The feasting is good, but thahat’s not the ont. It’s another paragraph. AND THEN we learn that, in another paragraph, there’s a zombie lying stuck on top of the dry well. NO! We put things relevant to an object near the object in the description. Stuck is an abstraction. Tell us how. Zommbie is an abstraction. Describe it to us. Paint the picture of what is ging on for the DM to expand upon and rif fon and run the encounter. It’s fucking terrible.

The entire thing is like this. Abstracted generic descriptions. No life in it at all.

And then there’s the design, proper. “On the altar lies a scroll with the following riddle: ”It’s so magical, it comes every night. It takes you away without moving. To see it, close your eyes. ” If the players say the answer out loud: Dream. The scroll magically transforms into a golden key.” This is the worst kind of thing. Just a meaningless riddle, unrelated to the game, a pretext to give out a key. Lame.

This is free at DriveThru. But you will never get your time back. All for a misunderstood evil witch.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/396898/EQ3-The-Mysterious-Witch?1892600

By Jonbar
Merciless Merchants
OSE
Levels 5-7

Shipwrecked upon a deserted island the party soon realizes they are not alone. Populated by intelligent and savage red haired apes, the heroes must fight for survival and find a means for getting off the jungle island. These hungry apes are eager for the taste of man flesh and are ruled over by something not of this world that thrives on hunting and terrorizing intruders within its domain…

Meh.

This 39 page adventure details an island with an evil ape. And a pyramid. And a volcano. Alas, no tribesmen. I’m left with an overwhelming sense of “meh” as I review this. I’m not excited about it. It’s seems staid. Maybe that’s because the formatting and writing style remind me of those middling days of TSR, beyond the wall of terse and just prior to the Shit Fest it became. Those days of Meh.

Ok, so, island, 20 by 30 miles. Tropical. Yeah, it’s fucking Dread. I’m not sure anyone can do a tropical island anymore without Dread coming up. Yeah, it’s got an evil ape, this time a demon ape. Yeah, you’re not really there for any reason (which is cool, I guess? Islands seem like work. Maybe I don’t grok the cargo carrying capacity of ships?) Besides the evil demon ape that most things on the island revolve around, there’s also a giant cro, a stone pyramid, and a small cave/tomb, each with about ten-ish rooms. 

Ok, so, good things. There’s a huckster selling a map as a hook. ““Look, why wouldn’t you want your own island that you own? Eh? For 5,000 gp, I can give you this deed to that island. I even got a map straight to it! Imagine….beautiful sands, the soothing waves of the sea, jungle birds and friendly monkeys? You just need to build your dream home…or perhaps a castle for heroes such as yourselves. What’s not to like? What do you say? 5,000 gp is a screaming deal…..” Sold! American Tobacco! I’d be in. That’s the way you say We’re Playing D&D Tonight Bitches! Your soul has to be dead to not swallow that hook. In fact, I’m gonna say that’s my litmus test. If you don’t follow that hook then you don’t get to play in my D&D game. The notes tsay that the deed is fake. Pffft! _I_ think it’s real, and saddling the players with a disease ridden island full of carnivorous apes, disease, pirates and the like is great!  Level 5-7? Sure, we can start some domain play! The other hooks are blah blah blah hire the party shit. LAME! 

The island is … meh? I mean, 20×30 miles, with like three features on it. I guess you can see them from the ship if you sail around it? I don’t knoow. DOesn’t say. But, it’s also not a hex crawl. Sweltering Jungle Island doesn’t come through in the island description or wanderers, but whatever. Also, the evil demon ape is supposed to be kind of omnipresent onthe island, but I don’t think that comes through on the thing either? ROll a ‘1’ on a a d10 for a wanderers, and then get a 12 on a d12 for the demon ape? Meh. I don’t know. The whole island just doesn’t seem to be a place. Empty With No Place To Go And Nothing To Do is the impression I’m getting.

Descriptions are … Long?I don’t know. I guess I get what they are going for. It’s not uncommon for them to be half a column, with multiple things going on in each room. But it comes off as busy. Here’s the first paragraph of one of the room: “The groaning and rumbling stone sound begins to echo away as the platform settles into the center of a square chamber, creating lazy dust swirls. Pillars stand on either side of passages that lead into darkness set in each wall, decorated with pictographs of various creatures (apes, colorful birds, snakes, etc.) that live on the island. Huge blocks, covered in hieroglyphics, create the walls and floors; the open shaft the only escape from the surrounding oppressive stone. Stone ledges along the walls hold vials, urns, decanters and other implements and tools organized neatly upon them with a layer of dust. Writings are engraved overhead of each of the four exits.” So, yeah, get it? Groaning stone. Lazy dust swirls. But, also, I’m bored. I’m not excited. Length? Writing style? I don’t know. I just really don’t give a shit. At All.

And I don’t mean that in a “Oh my god, every moment of this adventure must be the greatest moment of my life!” sort of way. Not set piece after set piece trying to top each other. That would be fucking lame. But the entire things just leaves me Not Excited about it. All of the encounters are just kind of there, and present, but nothing more. And not in a Regerts kind of way.

Which is a good transition. Best Of generally means I’m excited to run this! And Regerts gets close to that but generally has some flaw. This. I don’t know. I mean …

Here’s the description of the evil demon (literally) ape: “hulking and shaggy haired ape beast, with rusty colored fur and gray mottled skin. Long muscular arms end in wicked claws and the mouth has large, sharp fangs framed by curving horns. The legs are short, but powerful, and are able to grip limbs of a tree or grasp prey. Their stench of their matted unwashed bodies is almost overpowering and their eyes burn baleful dim intelligence.” I mean … meh? 

Props for taking one demon front the MM and making an adventure surrounding it. Good idea. But it just doesn’t come across in any way as an active adventure. Or something that you want to run. 

Or something that you want to play in.

The PDF is $10 at DriveThru. Le Preview is fourteen pages. The last few show you most of the encounters on the island, with just the three mini-dungeons left out. It does a good job of showing you the writing style, for the most part. Also, I just fucking didn’t care for this thing AT ALL.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/392345/Gyllagoons-Island?1892600

By James Mishler, Jodi Moran-Mishler
James Mishler Games
Labyrinth Lord
Level 1-3

A local tavern, known as a hive of scum and villainy, has fallen under the powerful curse of an angry wizard. The locals and the heirs of the taverner are offering an exorbitant sum for adventurers to go in and perform the needful actions to lift the curse. It is a LOT of money. And the adventurers get to keep all the treasure they find in the tavern. And the local authorities have even suspended their usual taxes on treasure. Too good to be true? As a down-on-your-luck adventurer, you are probably too poor to care…

This sixteen page adventure details a tavern, stuck in time, with three levels and 34 rooms. The pretext is pretty pretexty, it’s chocked FULL of monsters that a groups of firsties can’t deal with, the writing is padded out with historical context, and it lacks interactivity. There’s also the seeds, unknown to the designer, for a full fledged campaign that could be both interesting and boring as fuck.

Ok, so, bar is cursed and full of monsters, etc. You’re offered 1000gp to go fix it/clear it out. The locals know that its full of fursed tavern goers, and if you die inside you stay inside and you need to find five of the original bar patrons, kill them, and bring their foci, some shit, different for each one, that they wear out to the porch of the bar at first light. Then the curse is broken. They also know the exact foci of each one of the people inside. How? I don’t know. Shut up and stop asking questions. “But, they have the EXACT detailed information on the descriptions of each of the foci, from the wizards curse? That seems weird and …” I said shut the fuck up. It’s what the fucking game is tonight. 

In you go. Encounter one, in the foyer, is a 3HD black widow spider with 2d6 damage plus poison. TPK? Maybe. Directly beyond the foyer is the main bar, with 1d6+3+10% of the main gnoll force in the bar, as well as 1d6+3+10% of the ogres and orcs in the bar. They aggressively attack all intruders. TPK? For sure. 

And thus it goes. It feels like EVERY.FUCKING.ENOUCNTER. In this thing is a potential TPK. There is NO way in fucking HELL that a group of level ones is going to make it through this thing. And it’s all combat. There are no real secrets, or things to play with, or anything like that. There’s not really even any negotiating. Just roll on in and start fucking hacking. You got five dudes to kill … including a minotaur and a werewolf. Good fucking luck with that.

Oh? You’re a hot shot D&D player? That not hard enough for you? Well, you need to do it all IN.ONE.DAY. Yup, you got 24 hours to kill everyone you need to. Because at the dawn of the next day they all come alive again. Everything thing you’ve killed inside is back alive again and ready to go, again. Have at thee, varlet!

[Not mentioned are the bad room descriptions with historical context like: “(the body on the floor) … was reincarnated as a wolf, and no one has tried to enter the area since the GIANT …” or “an ogress thought to poach a dead adventurer, but was herself slain before she could, and the adventurer was reincarnated the next morning.” Perfectly adding nothing to the adventure but padded text that distracts. 

But …

This things got potential. Also, I’m living on 3.5 hours of sleep over the last 48 hours, so, bear with me some if I seem slaphappy.

It needs to be totally rewritten in to a groundhogs day adventure. Just make the entire campaign, the entire adventure path, in this one location. You go in, figure out what you need to do, get in good with people, and figure out a path through all the madness to get your five kills, against impossible odds (maybe all Hitman style?) through he course of one campaign. Like, one book, a hundred pages, different time/ages of the bar, different goals and how the bar changes over time as people reincarnate and come and go. It could be great Or an immense drag on everyone who plays it.

Like this thing is. I don’t see how its even possible to START playing this, given the spider and main room. I think you’re just gonna die. Meaning you reincarnate inside. SO, like, my groundhog day thing is closer to the truth than it might first seem? I think? mYabe? Is that how this thing is supposed to be played?

This is $3 at DriveThru. Preview is two pages, showing some random “how to reincarnate” bullshit. So, useless preview to figure out if you should buy it or not.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/397489/The-Tavern-from-Hell?1892600