Eminence Luminous & Virgin Tenebrous

Posted on January 11, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Filip Gruszczynski
Self Published
OSE
Levels 5-7

The Eminence Luminous monastery has fallen, but so has the besieged forces. Now the holy site stands silent, surrounded by a sea of corpses. Undead abominations, ravenous scavengers and pagan fiends roam inside. Deep below lies the legendary vault, full of divine relics and unholy artifacts. Will you restore the convent to its former glory? Or will you rather plunder its riches?

This 103 page digest adventure features a monastery, its outbuildings and dungeons with maybe 120-130 rooms and about a dozen interconnected levels/areas. This is gonna get a Regerts because I think the room text is a bit long, the descriptions a bit uninspired, and the digest format wrong. But, also, dude gets it. This is a real site based adventure with good interactivity, of which there are few in spite of everyone claiming they just published one. He’s got his shit together in this adventure.

Usually I like to talkIt’s 9 about nice things and then talk flaws. My back hurts and I’m not in that mood. But know you, gentle reader, this one may be worth you checking out. Now, excuse me while I go on a meaningless rant.

Digest format sucks shit. I know, people like it. It’s currently the rage “Zine zine zine!” is all you hear. I don’t know what the fuck you people think a zine is, but it aint what I think it is. A zine aint a fucking format. That’s a fucking digest. A zine is a fucking magazine. Multiple things in it. Yeah, tey look digest, usually, because you an photocopy it and fold the 8.5×11 in half … hence the digest format. Digest is not, however, a good format to publish your fucking adventure in, OSE to the contrary. Or, rather, it is GENERALLY not the correct format.

When you’re working with a large work, like this adventure is, I think you need to return to more traditional size. This is, in many ways, a very hard statement for me to make. In so many of the judgments I pronounce, it’s not really a binary statement. The decision to go digest on a large dungeon doesn’t make or break the adventure. It’s all a spectrum. Going digest may push your adventure a few “usability” percentage points in the wrong direction, if you don’t handle things correctly. And, thusly, saying “digest was wrong” is more of a “well, I think it was a wrong decision and if you had gone standard format then the rest of the decisions you made in this area may have presented better and perhaps to the point where I no longer have comprehension issues or at least not to the point where I feel like I need to write a lengthy section on it and/or start a review by commenting on it.” But, it’s easier to say that “digest was wrong.” 

On top of everything, the thing uses spreads. So, we’re back to traditional formatting, albeit landscape. And, it’s a fucking PDF product. Realistically, it’s only every GOING to be a PDF product. Almost no one is going to print this. Or buy a printed copy if/when one becomes available. I don’t mean to sound like an ass, but, rather, the number of PDF copies is going to GREATLY outnumber print copies. You don’t gotta hyperlink the fucker, but, at least don’t cripple the medium that everyone is going to be using. You’re not using a photocopier. I’m not printing this out. Why the fuck is it digest format?

And this exacerbates the problems with the text. The font is generous and the descriptions/DM text are not exactly svelt. This, in digest format, for a large number of rooms, give the impression of one room per column, even if it may be a little more than that. Your eye is travelling half the page to pick up information. This is not the way to good comprehension.

And, while it pains me to say this, I live in the United States. Some people do not. Life is not fair. And, I think, this is an EASL adventure and I’m about to rag on it for being so. The text here is not bad. The text here is not GOOD though. I mean, it’s adequate./ And, in many ways, because of that, above average. But, also, it comes off a bit staid in a way that it shouldn’t. There should be energy here tha tisn’t. And it’s not, I think, for a lack of trying. Here’s one of the better attempts: “ The sweet smell of honey mixes with the putrid stench of rotten flesh. Floors and ruined furniture are lined with sticky, pinkish resin. The air vibrates with frenzied buzzing.” This follows the guidelines. (Which, I suspect, is why I think its doing a decent job) But, also, it’s a little lifeless? It’s a little … I don’t know. Antiseptic? And a lot of the text is like this. 

Which is weird because dude clearly has it going on. In the “I don’t like your bullshit setting” DM offset box, it startswith “You break my heart, but that’s OK …” and then gives some more neutral setting advice. That’s the kind of aside I love. And the fucking wanderers are great. They take a sentence or two each and are full of fucking life. Really really strong situations that DO come to life. 

And this energy in the wanderers extends to the general interactitivy of the adventure. The thing is stuffed full of it. The maps has multiple level entrances everywhere. Very little gimping going on (I think. There’s a lot of undead in this adventure, especially low level undead, and the “turning” special rules are unclear to me … perhaps the only section in the adventure that IS unclear. Which is a shame for something so important.) Someg level/area interconnections everywhere. Move a statue for a hatch underneath. Go down a well. Its all there. And the magic items tend to be great ones. The setting here is a little LotFP, so, we get, as a treasure The WORD Of GOD. It’s a Wish. Fucking perfect. And the other magic items, both traditional and not, and pretty well done also. A pair of magic dice … that let you reroll dice. That’s a little meta, enough to make my brain hurt ? Mundane treasure, to level, feels light to me. Especially at this level.

There are little misses, here and there. A fuckwit “your greatest sin attacks you” thing. It could use  A LOT more cross-references. Undead that you could interact with (to the point of joining your party) that could use a word or two of personality more. Or at all. 

But the core of this is strong. A strong, multi area environment to explore. Good map connections. A great degree of interactivity. And descriptions (and formatting) that are trying. You can see that. And they are not BAD.

But, also, it’s a little lifeless and, in looking at the layout/digest/text density issues … I’m not sure I would pick this one up and actually use it. 

Which is a shame. There’s a lot to like here. A LOT. Filip deserves better than me.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. It shows you lots of rooms, so it’s a good preview. Room F10, on the first page, stretches across three pages and four columns. G2 on preview page five is also a good example of density.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/420549/Eminence-Luminous–Virgin-Tenebrous?1892600

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

The Beast of Borgenwold

Posted on January 9, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Harry Menear
Self Published
OSE
Levels 1-3

STRANGENESS AND TERROR FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!  Borgenwold is cursed, they say. Cursed by pride and greed to cower in fear of the past. A fell monstrosity from beyond the grave has risen to devour this town and all who dwell here.  

This 61 page exercise in pretension has a fourteen room dungeon. It shows some promise, in specificity, but lacks interactivity and the designer has their head so far up their Layout Ass that they ruin any hope of usability. It’s as if it were a kickstarter for a one page dungeon with four rooms, and all the stretch goals added things … but not to the dungeon and not actually usable. Just shit like “what color is the mayors hat back in town?” tables.

Some dude in town hires you to go to his moms tomb and bring back some priceless treasures for him. He’ll pay you 500gp per treasure recovered. Why you’re giving this shit to him, instead of just keeping it for yourself, is beyond me. He owes a loanshark and will be gone in a week anyway, if you don’t give the loot to him, so might as well take it. Speaking of the loanshark … he’s set up a big bad wolf … but has no stats. I assume that means he has 2HP and we stab him and take his shit. He’s got no bodyguards mentioned, when the text goes out of its way to mention bodyguards for everyone else. I assume this means the adventure was not playtested but a variety of other groups. Oh, yeah, did I mention the hooks and timeline don’t match up?
Weve not gotten a shipment for a couple of months now …” while the issues have been going on for a few weeks. 

So, look, this is going to be a theme with this review. The adventure is pretty much crap. There is some high points with the specificity involved, which shows a good deal of promise, but just about everything surrounding that is shit. But, you don’t really KNOW it’s crap just by taking a glance at it. 

And let’s talk about that. It looks niiiiicccccce! Ooo, look at that cover! Two page spreads! Nice art! And, hey, check out that fucking layout! Pretty artsy! Fuck me man, let’s put that fucking thing on the coffee table, am I right? (A reproduction of the wenge table in the Japanese embassy.) Oh course, it’s absolute shit.

The same fucking problem we always have with this art house garbage. The morons get a hardon over their layout. Their fancy fonts. Their background images. How they mimic some cutout style and put the tables at odd angles. The tables that take up an entire page. OOooo, look, a faux gothic style of font! Text that runs at an angle! Fucking idiots. I’m am so fucking done with their bullshit. If you don’t want people to run it then just label the fucking thing as a coffee table book and be done with it. Bt, ohhhh, noooo, no one will buy it if you label it like that, right? They want a nice looking book. Who the fuck said it … the secret to success is to pay for art and layout and have a print fucking version. That’s how you make bank. That’s what the fucking idiots buy. But, also, you are abandoning the core feature. It’s like buying a gorgeous new PC case … that’s completely sealed. You’re failing at the primary purpose. The fucking thing is a monstrosity to read. You can’t fucking follow it. It’s like almost every fucking choice was made to look pretty rather than to contribute to usability. And in this case I mean legibility. You’re fucking brain hurts to look at this. You can’t scan it quickly. The fucking main font, the use of the bold font, the off center text. The fucking gothic font. SHadow boxes and background images. It’s a fucking nightmare. Oh, sure, looks pretty. 

And, while I’m on a I Can’t Fucking Stand This roll, let’s talk about the core of the adventure. A fourteen room dungeon. Everything else in this is essentially padding. And, hey, I don’t mind a little local colour. I love it in fact. But the main adventure is the fucking dungeon. Fourteen rooms. Sixty pages. More on the shit-ass dungeon later.

What do you get? How about a table to describe the local hunters? You see, there’s some side shit (which is tangled up in the main quest.) The titular (heheh) beast is an undead manticore, taxidermied. There are some hunters about. You get a table to make up some hunters. EVen though they don’t really play much of a part in the adventure. They are hardly mentioned. ALso, there is not one table but like four. On four separate pages. That you get to roll on to make one up. How’s that for usability?

No? It’s not? But, hey, one table per page lets you so some funky layout shit! I mean, fuck you and actually running the thing. Otherwise we’d put all four tables on one page. Or, JUST DETAIL A FEW OF THEM IN THE FUCKIGN APPENDIX. People don’t understand what random is for. 

There’s some other shit hanging around in this. Some crazy goblins described over seven pages. The sum total osf which is unpretentious is “Small, cramped passages — too small for anyone but children and halflings to move about. Goblin eyes shine like stars in the torchlight.” That’s your goblin lair description. But, hey, we did get to masturbate over all of those freaky deaky goblin tables that take up the rest of the pages, right? 

There’s a hex map. It serves no purpose and is not linked to the text. Therefore it’s not a map. It’s an art piece. 

And the dungeon? It’s trying to use the OSE format but it fucks it up because because it dopesn’t know what is important. The idea is a short little description with bolded words that expanded upon. But this thing is all over the place in what it thinks is important. Thus, you’ll be readying the entire description to relate some bits to the party. This stands in direct opposition to what the OSE format is trying to do, when implemented correctly. Summary first. Or important things first. Or some way for the DM to figure out those things first. And, ultimately, the dungeon is just about stabbing shit. Stab stab stab. Stab stab stab. Almost no interactivity beyond this most basic of type. Enjoy your stabbing of 6HD creatures that are undead and immune to everything but fire and silver and magic. In your level one adventure.

The fucking thing looks like an adventure that someone has sunk money in to, and thus will be good. But it’s all flash.

It’s got some decent specificity. Good even. The lady that runs the tavern does so “with her two knucklehead sons.” Perfect! That communicates a lot! Of a magic hunting horn “The horn vibrates with raw magic; its makes your hand numb and your teeth hurt just holding it, like gripping a live wire.” That’s a magic magic item description! You know you’ve got something! Some commentary on some magic ‘godling’ fish says “If you eat enough of a gods children, you are eventually deemed a worthy addition to the family.” Absolutely! That’s one way of becoming a god/godling! It makes perfect sense and jives with all mythology ever. 

And, check out this terrific description “[…] bodies of villagers, merchants, hunters, guards — brutally, gleefully rent by claw and tooth. Hoisted into the trees, impaled upon pine limbs; a grisly larder. The air is putrid, a wall of sweet death smashing against the nose. Rotten corpse fluids run rivulets down tree bark. Flies swarm and buzz in clouds.” Fuck yeah man! Good description! So the specificity required to have a good description, to write a terse description that conveys overloaded meaning exponentially multiplied in a way that word count would not imply, os absolutely there. When the designer chooses to. In a dungeon room? No way. Hanging ut on its own somewhere, apart from the dungeon. Yup! 

“All the bestial heads mounted on the tomb’s walls animate, roaring, bleating, and wailing as one of the rooms’ animals come to life and another hunt begins.” Absofuckinglutly! Now, but ina room fucking description that matches. Trim yor fucking text. Organize it so that the most important shit is up top, and actually give us some descriptions of the situation, or a way to ferret it out to relate it to the DM. And take a chill pill when it comes to the fucking layout. Jesus, man. Make it fucking legible. The main thing is the fucking dungeon. Agonize over the fucking thing. Beat yourself over the writing. Then, you can pad out the region and town and npc’s and shit. 

(And, note, I’m not EVEN bitching about the disconnect between the hook, town, manticore, and adventure. I don’t fucking care. This is a bridge too far for 99.99% of designers, so I’m not going to beat someone up over it.)

The cottage industry continues. Layout dudes doing layout adventure bought by other layout dudes. But, he is not a ninja.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. The first six pages. So, one actual page of adventure timeline. IE: worthless for making a purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/410351/The-Beast-of-Borgenwold?1892600

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

The Witch, The Shepherd, His Goats and their Daughter

Posted on January 7, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By James Mishler, Jodi Moran-Mishler
James  Mishler Games
Shadowdark
Levels 1-2

Help the Shepherd find his Goats and Daughter who have been kidnapped by the Witch of the Woods. The woods are home to all manner of strange, fearsome, and fey monsters… not to mention the witch!

This twenty page adventure, with a fairy tale vibe, has the party exploring a wood with twelve locations to bring back a dudes daughter and goats and kill the witch responsible. Chill vibes but padded to all fuck and back. And you know what we say at tenfootpole: “Are you a fucking masterpiece? No? Then you better get your shit together if you want me to run it.”

It’s the day after Christmas and Sants brought me some Vegamite and olives stuffed with anchovies, in my stocking. So that’s breakfast. Along with an IPA. And this thing.Later today I’ll be making a suit out of garbage bags, buying thirty bottles of champagne and reading the Wizard of the Crow. So, you know, D&D will definitely NOT be the highlight of the day. Because of this.

We’re pretty close here. It’s got a vibe, brining a good fairy tale thing to the party. Shepherd lives on the edge of a BIG FOREST in a little cottage. His goats have been stolen by the witch of the woods, along with his daughter. You get 5gp per goat returned and 50 for the kid. (Who’s 19.) So close. Dude is a miser and cold-hearted, which is the source of all the troubles for him. I’d change it to 5gp per goat, and another 5gp for the kid. But, whatever. And, the kid is 19? Nahhhh, she’s fucking sixteen. See, dude made a deal with the witch, in exchange for a magic goat hed give her the kid at 16. But he didn’t. Do the witch plotted for three years for revenge? Nah. Make her 16. And keep the rest the same, I guess. Cause the kid hates dad also, and has been taught witchcraft by the witch and is in on ot. IE: some elaborate revenge plot going on here by these two. Fuck if I know man  … I guess they want to turn dad in to a goat and have some “put the amulet around his neck” thing going on. This part makes little sense. I get that you want the main witch to disguise herself as a black goat, very VVitch. But we’re straining here.

Otherwise, chill vibes in this one. A dwarf trapped in a fairy circle, complete with bird nests growing on him. A goat on a hill that won’t come down. A goat on a log in a pond. Giant goats next to a goat giant. A harpy … with the head of a goat. It’s all very fairy tale. 

One page per encounter. And it’s all padded out to fuck and back. 

“The Treasure Tree is a place where, long ago, some dwarves hid a BURIED TREASURE they won from some trolls. They buried it with many runes and curses against it being found and stolen… then they forget about it. Over the centuries the runes and curses came to life, animating the soil around the chest of treasure, creating a TREASURE GUARDIAN. Recently an adventurer found a map to the long-lost treasure for him, the Treasure Guardian overwhelmed him and his bones now grace the form of the guardian – as does the recently deceased body of a goat!d has tried to recover it. “ That was about 80% of the description of this location … and it has nothing gameable in it. History. What was. No description of what we’re looking at. No idea what to do, as a DM. 

It’s not until paragraph three that get one sentence “The chest is half unburied, with the shovel of the adventurer currently stuck in the body of the guardian.” That’s it. That’s your description. There’s another paragraph that has another description of the history of something in a manner that cant be used, also.

This is a classic “read it” adventure. It’s written to be read. You can’t use it during play without some serious time with a highlighter and note taking. The focus of the writing has to be on the DM using it at at the table. It is almost always the case that how the situation happened is not interesting for gameplay, and especially not so at he start of a description. We don’t dig through three paragraphs of useless info when the party enters the room. WWe need the data, now, to related to them. 

This don’t do that.

And I got other adventures to run that do.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. More than enough to see the actual encounters. Good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/419475/The-Witch-the-Shepherd-His-Goats-and-Their-Daughter-A-Shadowdark-Adventure?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 11 Comments

The Honest and Plain Village of Scio

Posted on January 5, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 

By G Edward Patterson III
The Skull as a Complete Gentleman Company
S&W
Levels 1-4

This 73 page booklet describes a town and then also a small, dozen-ish room dungeon. The town is absurd, in the best way possible for D&D. Idiosyncratic and full of things to amuse yourself with between dungeoncrawls. The dungeon is fine, turning in tone a bit more serious, as it should be. And, everything is ruined because the thing is unusable because the designer decided to fill the entire fucking with a selection of hard to read fonts. A great supplement, that is unusable.

We’re gonna cover this FUCKING FONT ISSUE. I can’t fucking stand this shit. “Ooo, Bryce cares too much about usability and not enough about design.” Yeah, fuck you man. Look, I’ve only reviewed a small percentage of adventures released over the last few years. And yet there are at least a hundred on my Best of list. You could play these fucking things for the rest of your fucking miserable fucking lives. Why, on gods green earth, would I EVER torture myself in order to run something  that I have to fucking flagellate myself to fucking use? THE NUMBER ONE FUCKING COMPLAINT OF ADVENTURES IS THAT THEY ARE HARD TO USE. Don’t be a fucking idiot and make your fucking adventure hard to use. 

So, this thing is trying for some product image of some branding “the skull as a complete gentleman company” or some shit. And thus the designer has deigned to fill the fucking thing with some unusual font selections. Some kind of gothic cursive? Illuminated manuscript? I don’t fucking know. “Fucking Illegible” is what it shows up as in Word. So, the main body of the text, being the most legible, just has a font that is full of curly-q endings and shit. Then the section headings have some kind of illuminated-ish or gothic font. This is fucking bad enough that it takes my brain more than a few seconds to struggle through figuring out what the fuck the heading says. Like which fucking business the following text describes. I had to actually copy/paste one section heading in to a text document so I could figure the fuck out what it fucking said. Summary sections, for a person, place,e tc are a few sentences long and are at the tope where they should be. In italics. Sorry, no, in the italics version of the fucking curly-q font. 

I’m not putting the fuck up with it. This thing is going on the trash heap, just like so many fucking others have. That’s right, all the fucking effort you put in to this causes it to end up in exactly the same fucking place as BloodyMage or Alfonso or the fucking rip off artists. The don’t give any fucks at all about your content … BECAUSE I CANT FUCKING DECIPHER IT!

That having been said, the content is magnificent. ?

The town is my kind of place. While I like my dungeons tending to the more serious side (with some absurdist situations) I like my towns and villages to tend towards the absurdist side of things with some serious situations. Ankh Morpork. A place full of hucksters and morons. With a rather fatalistic “adventurer” street people eat, drink, fuck, bet, and have a good time … because tomorrow they may die. And this city gets close to that.

It’s got absurdism. Like a flock of wild geese on the wanderers table. And a dude, in a separate location, called the goosemaster who “can speak a small amount of conversational goose.” (Note the use of the modifier “conversational” in that sentence. It adds a lot to the ambiance, yes? That’s good writing right there!”) There’s a table of petty businesses, which has as an entry “2. Carver of Knobs – ‘My true passion is shelving!’” That’s it. Absurd. And you can fucking run that fucking entry! Thats what I mean by the DM something to hang their fucking hat on!  The dude that sells sticks/kindling does so with a call of “The finest sticks in all of Ouaricon”. Disrespect him and he offers you an exclusive deal: a branch from the golden tiny-apple bush which has ultramundane properties that reveal themselves to the person who possess it.’ If you agree, he tells you to come to the same spot at midnight. Where you are attacked by the thugs he sells you out to because you are clearly fucking morons who need to be relieved of their fucking money. Absolfuckinglutly!

So, usability wise, it could use a few more cross-references and putting some page numbers on the “map” of the town. 

The dungeon at the end, a kind of point-crawl also-ran, has … fifteen rooms? I don’t know. They are not numbered and its laid out in a pointcrawl style, so one room tells you where to go fort the next room. With no fucking page references. We’re getting a little too fucking cute for our own fucking good here. Put some fucking numbers on it so I know if Mumified Garden is likely to be the page before or AFTER the page I’m currently fucking on. Otherwise, same shit. Too much italics. Fancy fucking font shit. Decent use of bullets and para breaks, and the interactivity is nice, if a little less exuberant. A little overemphasis on bring words, like Large and Small. But, it’s pretty much decent enough. At least it would e if it weren’t formatted/fonted in a cute way. Right now it’s just too busy. But, hey, lots and lots of interactivity, at least of the kind that fifteen room dungeons can have.

Monsters, in the appendix, are decent, but could use a little more emphasis on their descriptions, higher up in the text block. You want the visceral feel of a monster, and it’s lacking.

So, good example in this one of different text styles needed for different parts of an adventure. The town gets one thing. The dungeon needs another tone and style, and the monster descriptions yet something else. One size does not fit all in adventures … 

I’d slap a Best Of on this, except for the font crap. Yeah, even though it’s not an adventure and I’m a little suspect that the adventure is a little more “victorian gentleman” than I’d prefer. It’s a rocking town setting with a possibility of becoming the one I use most, up with Pembrocktonshire and the one I can never spell correctly. But, with that font shit and little finger arrows as bullets? Absolutely the fuck not. I don’t give a fuck about using your content if I can’t actually use your content.

This is $5 at DriveThru.Preview is sixteen pages, and is a good one. CHeck out page seven for some eye glazing action and page five for some great wanderers. 

There goes the last great American dynasty

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/419925/The-Honest-and-Plain-Village-of-Scio?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 18 Comments

Lamia Temple

Posted on January 2, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By DMDave, Ninetoes82
Self Published
5e
Level 3

To the locals, the Temple of Healing is a myth, a cautionary tale they tell their children. The legend says that the temple appeared one day on the edge of the desert. At first, the locals thought it was a mirage, as it was the miracle for which they had prayed: their city was in the grips of a horrific plague that had already decimated their population.

This ten page adventure features a symmetrical temple with sixteen rooms. It’s fucking dumb. Poor formatting,inconsistent descriptions, and a shitty implementation of the idea.

“Hey Bryce, is DMDave the Real Deal or just good at marketing or both?” Well, he’s got 4,500 patrons, so, we know he’s good at marketing. Dude is banking $12k a month, at least. Nice! He probably tells his visitors that he loves them, they are awesome and make him feel so special. He interacts with them. That’s how you build a fucking following. And, ultimately, how you make bank. No matter the quality of his work, I’m sure he’s outearned everyone in the OSR by a factor of at least ten. No single work produced can outearn $12k a month, month after month. So, you wanna make bank? Be a DMDave. You can stop reading now.

But, there is something else. In generations to come, will someone find the copper tablet-box and slip loose the ring-bolt made of bronze? Will they draw out the tablet of lais-lazuli and view the works cut therein? Will they be DMDaves? (The jokes on Shelley; .gov moved his monuments when the high dam was built!) No, obviously not. Baby needs to be a black sheep and a whore, outside of society. The cultural hero cannot be OF the culture. Build your walls, plant your orchands, cut your works in to the tablets; it’s as close as we’re getting to the bitter herbs … cause the snake always eats them first. But, fuck it, it’s something, right?! (This essay on selling out and mortality brought to you by Ramses 2, Patty Smith, and Melanie Martinez.)

Ten pages, fifteen rooms. The temple is symmetrical, which ALWAYS bodes poor;y. Symmetrical maps suck shit and are boring to play. There are brief exceptions for small symmetrical sections, especially when hinting at secret areas, but the entire thing symmetrical is boring

We got no hooks. That’s reserved for people who pay DM Dave. (Evidently this is the free version of the “you give me money” version.) So, ok, we don’t need that. We only bitch about hooks if they are actually included. Moving on, though, we see that detect magic doesn’t work inside the temple because everything is magic. We see, right here, that DMDave is not, actually, a good DM. DMDave insists that you experience the adventure the way he intended and fuck you for thinking otherwise. Get on the fucking railroad and follow the ‘Story’ tha the DM tells themselves is wonderful. We don’t do this. Not in the OSR, not in D&D, not in ANY RPG. The party makes the decisions. This is one of the key elements of ALL game play, I would assert. Otherwise it’s not a game, DMDave. The party earned the abilities. They get to use them. If you can’t write a level twenty murder mystery adventure because of SPeak with Dead then guess the fuck what? You’re not writing a level twenty murder mystery. 

Ok, so, back to the actual adventure. Lamia takes over a ruined temple. She cats a powerful illusion over everything to make it looks like its new and fresh and I guess people come to it now for some reason. I don’t know why. I assume she eats them or makes bank, but that’s not really covered well. JJust shit the fuck up and “experience” the game.

The writing sucks ass. “During it’s heydey this section of the gardens was used to grow and harvest verbs used in healing and potion-making.” Fucking wonderful. A history lesson. We don’t care about that. We care about actual gameable content. NOW. When the party enters the room. Whats going on NOW. The number of fuck ass adventure that still do this fucking shit, in this day and age, is fucking absurd. 

Ok, so, illusions everywhere, in where room. Covering every creature, just about. The description tells you what you see. Sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you just get the illusion description. Sometimes you get get the non-illusion description. I guess DMDave can’t actually be bothered to be consistent? Or his editor “The DMDave Team” can’t bebothered to actually do their jobs as editors? What ya doing here man? Pick a fucking path. 

We also get justifications for things, like a cursed pool. “And has been cursed by the lamia with powerful magic.” Wonderful. We already know its cursed. What did that sentence add? You don’t need to justify things. Just do it. Cogito. It is. Stop fucking justifying things in a fantasy fucking game. (Or, any RPG for that matter.)

The kitchen is real. Maybe? Illusions are supposed to cover everything, but it says the kitchen is really kept up? A couple of cooks make food. Its kind of gross. And they are guarded by two cocatrice. Seriously? As intelligent guards now? Are they covered in an illusion? What the fuck is going on?! 

Your reward is a +1 mace. So, you know, full of the majesty and wonder of a game that enables the imagination, this one. That’s the fucking point. The +1 mace, appearing in this, is full on representative of everything wrong. Ok, sure fuck wits, you can have a different opinion when the adventure is stuffed full. But, as a single magic item? This is the thing? A +1 mace? DMDave does NOT know what makes a good D&D game.

The formatting is all over the place. It’s just paragraph form writing, with no effort to enable the DM to run the adventure effectively at the table. We get some building, but that’s just “Trapped Room” or something. It’s an ineffectual format, as it has always been. To use it effectively you have to really focus the writing and that’s just beyond the casual form of writing, and production speed, that DMDave is going for.

Is it good? No. Is it bad? Yeah, kinda. Is he making bank? For sure. So, as a means to that its great! But, if you actually want a good D&D game? No. It’s just Kabuki, like the Pathfinder “most people just read them” shit. It enables the revenue model. Is he as cynical as Paizo? I hope not, so, I’m not going to give this one a Crook tag. But, also, DMDAve must, in some way, like the game. I hope he makes something that embodies that, rediscovering his love, rather than the production line stuff he seems to be crapping out.

This is free at his Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/file?h=75750960&i=12513972

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 37 Comments

Ear Notch Lair

Posted on December 31, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Pete Racek
Wolfhill Entertainment
1e
Level ?

Pffft, they’re just Goblins. What are all of you so Scared?

This fifteen page adventures features a twenty room cave dungeon full of goblins. And is shit, representing all that is wrong with the world.

I heard that Ear Notch Lair killed a man in Arkansas. And, also, that it burned down a house in Reno. And jaywalked in Burbank. And took the sucker from a babies mouth in Altair. Also, I heard it plays 4e.

Making humanoids great agin, right?1 Right on man! I mean, ignoring the divisive slogan,I can get behind some Yrchyn The Tyrant style lair! Let’s get some kobold action going baby! And not that Tuckers shit, but some hard nose fuckers with some iron pipes comeing for you!

Oh, wait. That’s not this adventure. This adventure has the party stating captured, only in rags. So, it’s making goblins scary again by taking away everyone’s spells and equipment and dressing you only in rags (why do that? Why not go full on FATAL?) So, you know, the designer didn’t even try at all.

It’s a jail break. You’ve been captured, off screen presumably, and now are manacled up in a cell. Make a HARD Muscle check to break loose! Ok, so, you know when it says “1st Edition” in what this is written for? Yeah, no, not so much. Life Points, Armour equivalent to Splint mail, a to hit equal to the most proficient person in the party … this is generic garbage that is actually 1e but too fucking afraid to put in some stats. Did I mention that one of the first sentences in the product is “There is No open game content in this product and no portion may be reproduced for any reason?” Hey, man, I just reproduced your Do Not Reproduce statement. Better sue the fuck out of me. Or, you could stop being a FUCKING IDIOT and take that shit out and just concentrate on actually writing an adventure using 1e stats. You know, what everyone else is doing? I know, I know, you’d have to actually concentrate on the adventure then and that’s _hard_. You put the fucking effort in to the fucking adventure. You put it in to making it good. You agonizing over the writing and the fucking encounters. You don’t put the fucking effort in to coming up with a synonym for Hit Points over fear of a fucking lawsuit. The main fucking thing is the main fucking thing. 

Ok, back to the adventure. I missed my HARD muscle check. So did everyone else. I guess our adventure is now over since we can’t escape? You don’t put the fucking adventure behind a gate. You don’t make the evenings play depend on a single roll. Jesus, it’s like the last ten years of adventure analysis doesn’t fucking exist at all. 

Oh, hey, hey … remember you start in just rags? You can use the goblins weapons, right?!!!! Except they all break on a 1 in 10 every time you use them. But, of course, that doesn’t happen to the goblins when THEY use them. Cause, you know, the designer is a cool dude. We don’t do adversarial play. 

Oh, lets see … the map. Pretty decent. Caves. Some larger caverns. Asream flowing through it and some water. Some flowstone steps. Some tunnels. I’m digging on it. There’s a color coded one that makes no sense ta all, and simple things lie the guard patrols are not shown on the map at all, but, hey, a designer can’t be expected to do their jobs, right? Why make it easy on the DM? It will, no doubt, build their fortitude, to just write a description of the patrol  instead of putting it on the map. 

Oh! Oh! The chief has 360gp! That’s your fucking treasure! ENjoy your 1e Gold=XP life experience you fucking morons! Hahahahahaha! And you thought you were playing D&D! Welcome to the hellish world of the DM/Designers creation where they toy with you for no reward! This is what people think D&D is. It’s sad.

Rooms have, like, a one sentence description in normal text and then a fuck ton of bolded text that is DM text. I most often mention italics, and long sections of it being hard to read, but that goes for any fancy font treatment. Short bolded words to call attention. A sentence. Maybe two. Not paragraphs. It makes it unreadable. 

There’s nothing here. Room notes on how to sneak past goblins, that take up a huge amount of text, per room. DM notes out the wazoo rather than shit going on for the DM to leverage. Meaning, advice to the DM on how to run the room rather than setting up a situation for the DM to run. 

It’s all just so depressing. A fifteen pages for twenty rooms. And the chiefs quarters near the entrance/exit, since that’s the goal, instead of deep inside, as it normally is. 

This is just another low effort entry to the long line of low effort entires that make up the D&D adventure market.

This is $1.50 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. Sir Hiss says “Suuuckkkkerrrrrr!”

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/417728/Ear-Notch-Lair?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 2 Comments

Shadow from the Stars

Posted on December 28, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Matt Kline
Creations' Edge Games
S&W
Levels 8-10

That covers got fuck all to o with the adventure, so ignore it.

An evil cult has taken over the Bronze Aerie Observatory. They’ve used the site’s main telescope to fulfill an ancient prophecy, calling their “Dark Lord” down from the stars. The being is trapped inside the observatory, for now.

This eighteen page adventure uses a few pages to describe a nine room observatory. No interactivity. No good descriptions. A paragraph formatting. It is just another shovelware title.

My experience, with OD&D, has been that once you reach level 6 you are pretty much bad asses. Sure, maybe a little fragile, but, also, you can pretty much nuke shit from orbit. People should be shitting themselves when you drop by for tea. So, this is a level 8-10 adventure. And it’s nothing more than a simple hack. Show up and stab some shit in a simple nine room dungeon. You are offered $5k to go to an observatory and collect some star charts. They give you five days rations and some horses if you don’t have them. So … you killed Great Cthulhu last week, are flying around in his severed upside down head, and defeated the monstrous deGrazzi Kingdoms last Tuesday. But, sure, do a fucking fetch quest for $5k. And, the treasure inside is so minimal as to be not really worth picking up. Maybe, I don’t know, $15k worth? Split? There’s no fucking XP there. But, sure, I’ll send in my level 10 dude. 

Oh, oh, and inside he can fight a bunch of 8HD cultists! Cause, now, level 8’s are just running around the fucking countryside! Not that any of them have names, but, whatever, right? We just needed something to stab and so “8HD cultists” made the pick. 

Interactivity, right? You stab shit. Then you stab some more shit. Then you stab some shit. Then you talk to the bad guy, a giant floating head. Maybe help him out, or, maybe stab him. Stab stab stab. Stab stab stab. … what fun we’re having … 

The writing sucks ass. The first line of the first room is “It looks as though a struggle recently occurred here.” That’s a conclusion. We don’t do conclusions in read-aloud. We describe things. That same room has all of the history of the dude that unlocks the doors. He’s not in the room. His history has NOTHING to do with the actual gameable content in the room. But it’s sure as fucked shoved the fuck in there, clogging shit up. Orm Redzig is stationed there during the day, folks. The key he uses to unlock the doors is currently missing. Not that the fucking party would know that, at the fuck all. 

Here’s a fun one. The room name is “Staff’s Quarters.”  The read-aloud describes a dorm. The first line of the DM notes is “This is the living quarters for the observatory’s staff. For serious?! I had no fucking idea! It’s just padding. It’s the repeated use of the same information. Multiple rooms read-aloud starts with “This room serves as the observatory’s blah blah blah” Exact words! 

This is just shovelware. It mimics the form of an adventure but has very little to do with one. There is no interactivity. There are no evocative descriptions. There is not useful formatting, everything just appearing in long multiple paragraph form. It is the most simple adventure possible. Barely one step removed from a minimally keyed dungeon, except it’s just got more words. 

Shovel it out man! Shove. It. Out.

This is $1.50 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages. You get to see some wandering monsters on the way to the observatory. Shit ass preview since its show sus nothing of the core.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/418665/Shadow-from-the-Stars-A-Swords–Wizardry-MiniDungeon?1892600

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

The Hall of a Thousand Bones Part 1 – Approaching the Cathedral

Posted on December 26, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Jean-Claude ''Raznag'' Tremblay
Le paysagiste de l'Imaginaire
OSR
Level 1

Will you be brave enough to explore the ruins of the Forgotten Cathedral to find Orane’s Scepter? What mysteries are hidden in these places?

This twenty page adventure uses seven pages to present a single ruined room with seven encounters spaced around it. A page per encounter. Of nothing. I have a hard time believing this is actually a thing. But, I’m looking right at it.

So, a page per encounter, right? Must be pretty awesome! 

No, of course not. What’s the opposite of that? “Approaching, several skeletons can be seen prowling the ruins! These are equipped with shields and swords! They are very aggressive and will attack on sight!” Magnificence! They are all like that. Barely there minimalism. There is nothing to this that “1d6 skeletons” doesn’t also accomplish. Oh, wait, no, I lied, there is more. A treasure list for them that only a Victorian could love! “Sword (1 each) Shield (1 each) 1 Helmet, 1 leather purse (empty) 1 Belt” I am dazzled. I am amazed.

The map is hyperlinked. Like I said, one big above ground ruined room. There are seven icons scattered around it, on the map. A goblin head and so on. You click on the head and it takes you to “Graveyard.” So, absolutely no chance you’re actually going to use this map during play without literally toggling back and forth between the map and the encounter you are on. You know, the encounter that says “Seven skeletons attack relentlessly and on sight!”

I do NOT have it in me this morning to deal with this crap. Under what fucking theory of adventure design is this a thing? What is being used as an example to model this on? There were, what, like TWO adventures that used this format, Palace of the Vampire Queen and one other, before the theory moved on? And this is what we get these days?

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $1. So, no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/418861/The-Hall-of-a-Thousand-Bones–Part-1-Approaching-the-Cathedral?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 9 Comments

The Creeping Terror

Posted on December 24, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Kormar Publishing
Kormar Publishing
OSR
Level 3

Undead frost pirates, mad imprisoned fae, and a pile of loot guarded by a monstrous slug…

THis nineteen page digest adventure features a three level sea cave with about 22 rooms. Colourful descriptions and encounters compliment an easy to scan/use format to produce something that you’re excited to run!  OD&D returns motherfckers!

Yeah, ok, it’s not OD&D. But, also, I think  there is an OD&D vibe and it’s my preferred gaming vibe. I mean, fuck that hoity toity version. And that high fantasy version. And that superhero version. And that minis combat version. And that Ca$sh Cow version. Gimme me some OD&D vibes baby! Yeah, sure, #NotAllVersions, but, whatever man, yo know what I mean. An OD&D vibe is WHERE. IT. IS. AT!

Sometimes you crack a cover and you know. You just know. One of the first sentences, talking about the local village, is “Some folk farm, others fish, all are miserable.” This, gentle reader, is the epitome of evocative writing. There’s a juxtaposition here. I was expecting the normal fantasy village shit when I read “some folk farm, others fish” … but then WAMMO! Fuck yeah baby! I can run that village. I can run the entire thing. I don’t need ANYTHING more. This will be the greatest village I have ever run in my life because of that sentence. 

This adventure delivers that evocative style over and over again. It’s not exactly word choice, although that helps. It’s more of a framing of the sentence itself. The local bar? “The menu consists of salted fish, turnips, and cheap beer.” Rock on! Or, lets look at the fey, some creatures that feature prominently on level two of the dungeon, in particular . Stats as elf, but “: translucent blue skin, permanent fanged smiles, makeshift seaweed garments” Thats a fucking description! And fort the “bloody crabs?” “child sized crustacean, fleshy shell, pulsing veins.” Or how about a waterlogged corpse covered in barnacles and ocean detritus? Or a specter pirate … missing eyes that have been replaced with crab/small crab claw. The fucking descriptions are good man. It’s like someone IMAGINED the place, the thing, whatever, first and THEN came up with words for it. 

The map is three levels, with the last having only four rooms .. but flooding during high tide. The rooms are concise. Maybe a first bullet with a two or three sentence description and then a follow up second one with a little more information. (I would note that I think bullets are misused here. Bullets are great for calling attention to things, but, if you’ve only got two paragraphs, both of two or three sentences, you probably don’t need to bullet them. You need a clear separation, for scanning, which bullets do, but also, you don’t need them if its short. Bullets alot a magic solution.)

We got good encounters. NPC’s are on a table, with some great terse aspects to them, along with where they are found. Easy to use and memorable. Encounters are chill. “Four skeletons are impaled on stalagmites and message has been carved in to the southern WALL: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES” Yesh baby! We’re no a fucking adventure now! The back wall has a crack … that can be SHIMMIED through. Excellent word choice. A rotting trap door, it’s handle encrusted in barnacles … that cut you if you try to use the handle. Hey, man, the DM warned you! This shit goes on and on “A fae bruiser and three bound fae hold court in this dank cavern debating the finer points of sun worship, namely, whether the sun exists. They vehemently despise the moon worshipers in cavern 15.” da da da! Strong encounters that, by their very nature, contribute to the evocative nature of the writing. Ghouls bicker over if they can eat zombie flesh. Skeletons SCALP their victims … thats chill! Nice specificity! And, there are things going on in the caves that you can nuke. Return treasure to the pirates and they all disappear. Lets the fae out and they leave you alone. Oh, they slaughter everyone in the village above … except for the one proto-witch girl that they abduct and train. Is that a bad outcome? Meh … it’s an outcome. Shit happens. And I fucking love the attitude of giving the monsters what they want to appease them and also a Fuck Around And Find Out attitude.

So, yeah, I fucking love this one. It’s not the end all and be all of creation, but, also, I’m SO much more excited about it than that last thing I reviewed and Bested. This one has the spirit of D&D that the other was perhaps missing. At least for me. Cause, you know, I like to have fun when I play D&D.

Oh, also, hey, put those “environment” things on the map, dude. The “crashing waves, dampness, etc” that make up the “always on” descriptions for the entire dungeon? Stick it on the map or some place that I’m always looking at so I remember to add them!

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $2. No fucking preview. But, then again, PWYW, so, the whole thing is a preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/418780/Cavern-of-the-Creeping-Terror?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews, The Best | 11 Comments

The Oneiric Hinterlands

Posted on December 21, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Stephen Jones
Unsound Methods
OSE
Levels 1-7

Deep in a hollow hill in the ancient Woldwood lies the Dream Gate: a beachhead for a war against reality that never came to pass. Its custodian, Lord Nuada, has disappeared, and now the oneiric energies have begun to warp the very fabric of the world. Nuada’s subjects – the sapient animals called the Danu – are too distracted to care. Following his disappearance, a civil war ended in a magical catastrophe, and the ascension of cruel predator overlords.

Meanwhile, the ‘Goblin King’, deposed by Nuada, has returned from Underland. Sending his fungal minions into Nuada’s abandoned hill palace, he seeks to retake his throne. Nearby the dwindling human colonies are still dealing with the aftermath of their war with the giants two decades earlier. Rumors circulate that the leader of the giants may have returned from death, and now treasure hunters arrive to disturb things best left buried.

This 144 page adventure features two dungeons and a wilderness area, all interconnect with plot hooks. It’s a real deal adventure. Lots of interactivity and a decent format compliment an adequate job at evocative writing to produce an environment that can occupy a decent amount of your campaign.

The general set up here is a vaguely points of light type environment. A war with giants awhile ago left many of the surrounding kingdoms destroyed. This we get a wilderness, and a starter town. The wilderness has a about twenty locations to wander around in. But, those encounters generally have a common theme … linking them to the larger situation going on. A woodlands fey ruler is missing, there’s a new one in town “the goblin king” (ala Bowie) And the local baddie, killed awhile ago, may be back! Andthen there’s some intelligent animals running around the first, split in to the SOme Are More Equal Than Others group, in charge, and a small rebellion, and the bulk who are just trying to get by. We can supplement that with … idk, like, twelve other groups running the forest, including escaped prisoners and the people hunting them, and A LOT of others. 

The wilderness environment is almost large enough to support itself as its own campaign. I’ve seen a lot of shit that don’t come close to it in with regard to size and degree of interactivity. So, what we’ve got is a relatively complex (but easy to follow!) social environment with plenty to stab and steal and talk to. But that’s not all, by a long shot. Because the wilderness here is just the larger context in which the “main” adventure takes place.

And that’s two dungeons, of 34 rooms and 118 rooms. These are related to each other, and related to the things going on in the wilderness and the overall “plot”, if we can call it that. FOr there is a timeline here. Shits going down motherfuckers, with or without you! We’ve got about thirteen weeks worth of activities that can happen while the party is out fucking about. People are on the move and they got places to go and shit to sack!

Formatting is good. NPC’s are terse and use bullets and such to make finding their personality traits easy. The details are gameable. ROom entries start with a (useless) one line summary and then move to “First impressions” … a few short sentences, two or three, that giev an overview of the room for the DM use. A few words in that description are bolded, and then those act as section headings lower to add more detail. It’s easy to scan and find what you need. 

Interactivity is great. Chasms, rooms with knee deep water, secret doors behind giant heads. Traps, generally telegraphed, and creatures that make sens in the environments they are in. And, this isn’t just mindless crawling, after all, there are a plot point or two to figure out and resolve … if the party is interested in doing that. 

The ideas, for the encounters, here are pretty good. A ghost of a dead giant in a cell, sulking, in despair over his (dead) brother. He wasn’t really in to the whole “take over the world” thing and just came to be with his brother. Or, a place in the woods where the locals dump their unwanted babies. Ouch! All pretty well done. A beginning encounter, near town, is “The zombie (9 HP) is the returned form of Old Jeb who died last winter.

f left alone he will go inside his old home, and shut the door. The terrified townsfolk will call for the Reeve, Ulric Frost. After brief consultations with the townsfolk, Ulric will wedge the cabin door shut and set fire to it with the zombie inside. The charred remains will be collected the following morning and buried outside the town boundaries (after suitable blessings from Father Benedict).”  That’s pretty well done, right?

Things fall down a bit with the actual writing of the descriptions. They are not bad, at all. But, also, they are not home runs.”A spectral male giant in tattered robes with greasy looking shoulder-length hair is muttering and swaying. Swaying, greasy, tattered, … ok, sure. Not great but ok. “Spectral male giant” is a bit bland though, yes? I spean, yes, “spectral”, which is better than most would do … but we’re not looking at most are we?. “At the bottom of the pit: a horizontal tunnel, knee-deep in muddy water, leads into darkness.” Not bad! That conjures up a pretty “oh shit! Attitude for people, I bet!

So, a real deal adventure for sustained play. A lot of running around, multiple dives in to the dungeon(s), and some maneuvering back and forth of the political situation … without judgment from the designer on which side, if any, to take. This isn’t rock star quality, but, also, it’s a pretty solid entry in the adventure market.

This is $13 at DriveThru. The preview is twenty pages and shows you a decent number of rooms, so, pretty good preview from the standpoint of letting you see what the writing and encounters are like.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/418017/The-Oneiric-Hinterlands?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews, The Best | 10 Comments