tenfootpole.org

By J Blasso-gieseke
21st Century Games
OSE
Level 2?

Fear the tides! For upon the ocean’s black abyss rides a keep of stone on the broad shelled back of the mighty dragon turtle Greth.

Fear the tides! For unbeknownst to the fisher families of Stonewave the tides have turned against them.

Fear the tides! For this night, the vast body of Greth will beach itself upon the shore and a score of Iguanamen will be disgorged to raid the town for fresh human flesh.

Can the party fight off the Iguanamen raid in the night? Can the party reach Greth in time to rescue the captives before he dives into the deep?

This is an entry in my Wavestone Keep adventure design contest. Which I held to combat the crushing ennui I feel when reviewing too many bad adventures in a row. The challenge was to write and short adventure, eight pages, inspired by the concept and marketing tagline of the Wavestone Keep adventure. Now, to combat my crushing boredom, and the perfectionism which prevents me from working on larger projects, I’m going to review the entries!

This eight page adventure details about thirteen locations, including a keep with nine rooms. It’s got some wonderful use of language, good treasure, and a fun “raid” mentality with a cool little mechanic. I’m a fan!

Generic vs Vanilla comes up all the time. Generic is bad but vanilla can be delicious! This adventure features two classic tropes that, finally(!) are combined in to a delicious vanilla. First, we’ve got the classic Dragon Turtle with a building on its back … with the threat of an impending DIVE! DIVE! DIVE! Second, we’ve got a sea raid by humanoids. Both of these have been to death … or so I might have previously said. As always, the classics are classics for a reason and, when done well they show you why. And this one is done well.

You’re asleep in the inn when shit hits the fan. A nightime raid from the sea by humanoids! They are dragging people off! You see some inside the inn and deal with them, run outside and see a guy standing there saying shit like they just ran off with the Potters kids! You go down to the docks (cause you’re fucking heroes! I usually deride this kind of thing, but, it works here, I think, because of the frantic nature. More on this later.) Ol Yurtle is about to head out to sea and you board him, maybe by rowing out if you were slow, and get on his back to raid the keep to free the people taken hostage. And, maybe, if you were very good little adventurers … find the treasure room before the turtle dives.

Also, this is gonna be one of those gushy reviews where I fanboy out.

Everything in this works perfectly together. The writing is evocative and descriptions terse by favourful. “A bloated corpse bound with iron kelp. 1 iguanaman glutting itself.” Bloated. Glutting. Fuck yes! Not to mention, the use of iguanamen itself father than lizardmen or bullwugs or some shit. Noice! When you run out of the inn for the first time you are greeted with “Johann Sparr, a simple, but powerfully built fisherman in his late-40s, will be standing barefoot on the cobbled street in a soiled night dress and cap wrestling with his conscience to go after the raiders.” That’s fucking perfect. Soiled, wrestling, barefoot on cobbled streets. I can run this entire scene, and, indeed, the rest of him since he’s an NPC that may stick around. Further, he don’t stick around and become troublesome, he can show you the way to the docks so you find them faster and pick the fastest boat to chase the turtle, which is probably out to sea at this point. Then, after reaching the turtle, HE GOES BACK TO GET HELP AND MORE BOATS TO TAKE THE RESCUED PEOPLE BACk!!! A fucking useful NPC! And, it gets rid of him before he becomes an escort mission. And, it makes the fuck sense! Nice!

It’s using a great 2-column landscape formatting to great effect, stuffing the pages full of text, but also using bullets and indents and highlighting/bolding to great effect to make everything pretty easily digestible. Oh! Oh! And you’ve got a little “check off” box for the iguanamen raiders and the hostages … cause some of those fucking people ain’t coming back “On the sea slick floor of the dragon turtle’s shell, 2 Iguanamen are hastily devouring a pair of corpses.” Ought oh! Better mark off two hostages! I love it! Good shaded boxes for monster stats also. 

We also get a Time Unit Tracker. A hidden chart, the DM marks off Time Units based on combats, fucking aruond, if the party has help from the fisherman, etc. It’s fucking tense as shit! Seriously, this is the first time I’ve seen a “race against time!” adventure that actua;ly FEELS tense! “Any time the party desitates, mark a time unit.” Fuck me! Gahhhh! I might put this up on a whiteboard or giant paper behind me and mark them off in BIG letters. It’s also recommending an egg timer, but it’s use is less clear. Anyway, this is great! Eventually the turtle dives, over three time units, giving the party time to escape the flooded keep on its back to, hopefully, the waiting boats. Or the one boat they took!  Fucking tense, I love it!

Treasure is great, including a conch that summons a ghost ship! That’s all there is and that’s all the fuck I need! I havent decided yet if its just a ship, ala folding boat, or like full of undead pirates, ala Horn of Valhalla, but I’ll figure it the fuck out … whch if the fucking way I love my magic items. Mystery! Wonder! Joy! Mundane treasure is good also, with things like a mother-of-pearl gorget. Everything is just a line or two, and the vast vast majority of the treasure is in one room in the keep … and you’ve probably found most of the hostages before then … although you don’t know that … Push your luck at its finest!

Specify is great. The hostages all get names, which should add to the roleplay fun, and the fisherman says something like “Some sort of lizardmen! I seen them carrying off the Potts’s kids!” when he’s encountered outside. That’s fucking great! That’s specificity! That brings the game alive so much more than just generic “they are abducting people!” 

I think I have only one suggestion for this. I might add, up front, that the turtle will dive soon. I don’t think I want to SHOW on the chart, when the turtle dives, that’s too immersive breaking, but, I do think I want the party to KNOW he will dive soon, to add even more tension. Some NPC yelling something about it always diving in an hour or something like that, just to get that across to the party up front as I’m marking time units publicly.

Our designer, here, claims to have just discovered RPG’s in January (a year ago, I think, not two months ago?) and claims to have NEVER played an RPG before. They just read and learn. God, I love them so much. Hey, asshat readers, let’s find out where the designer is and some of you non-sucky people run a game for them!

The designer doesn’t have a site yet, so here’s the adventure, with their permission, for download.

by Glenn Robinson
Self Published
OSE
Levels 1-2

This ancient tower of stone watches over waves, the tides, and the sea itself! What secrets lie within?

This is an entry in my Wavestone Keep adventure design contest. Which I held to combat the crushing ennui I feel when reviewing too many bad adventures in a row. The challenge was to write and short adventure, eight pages, inspired by the concept and marketing tagline of the Wavestone Keep adventure. Now, to combat my crushing boredom, and the perfectionism which prevents me from working on larger projects, I’m going to review the entries!

This eight page adventure details a nine adventure locations, and a few bonus locations in the surrounding environs. There is this implied plot, or, background, going on in it that I absolutely LUV, and Glenn has certainly mastered the art of writing a sentence that implies much more than it actually says. A great adventure! All the more so for being his “first attempt at putting a dungeon coherently on paper.” 

I don’t even know where the fuck to start this review. I’m excited about this thing and that happens when I’m excited. There’s this tower, an old ruined lighthouse. There are some farmers fields around it. A small beach underneath it with a cave, and a wreck out on the reef. The tower has, like five rooms, or so. The caves like three, and the wreck a few numbered locations. There’s NOTHING to this place, just looking at the numbers. And yet, there is EVERYTHING going on. 

This fucking thing looks good right from the first two paragraphs. The first has this gem: “On stormy nights travellers claim a ghostly light- keeper tends the light. It is also said that the blood-drinking sea fiends will run a ship aground on the jagged section of cliffs known as “the sleeping wyrm’s maw” and devour the survivors. At least, that’s what the locals would have you believe.” Perfect! It sets a mood in the DMs head! It’s got some rumors built the fuck in without there being a rumor table! Not just monsters but sea-fiends! Not just sea-fiends by BLOOD DRINKING sea fiends! And a fucking ghostlly lighthouse keeper to boot! Sounds like my kind of guy!

And para 2 is “The shire has banned visitors to the old tower – in its current state, it is a health and safety nightmare the shire wants no part of, thank you very much!” I can fucking work with that! Busy bodies running around, minor officials, forms and receipts for the receipt of forms delivered! I know everything I need to know about the admin environment from that sentence. I can riff on it endlessly! That’s what the fuck good writing is, more than the words on the page. 

The next section is “geography”, but that’s a mis-label. In most adventures that would be boring ass shit. In this it means “the area right the fuck in front of the tower.” Bracken and saltgrass. The Pilgrim Path road, or Way of Sorrows, or, locally, just The Road. Perfect! Poor framing land surrounding it … which the locals often remark on the farmers prosperity … and the scarecrows … which the farmers cautiously call their “inheritance.” Jesus, I’m almost quoting the entirety of the first page here. But SOOOOO much is in it! 

It’s a fucking scooby doo advenure! The lighthouse with a well-oiled lock on it. Footprints in the dust. Sea caves full of ill gotten loot. A lizardman harpooned to the deck of the ship … with a manacle around his leg! The adventure never spells shit out to you, in black and white, yet SOOO much is implied in the writing. It’s a fucking scooby doo adventure! I love it!

Writing and formatting it excellent. A short and terse little sentence or two. A bloated keyword or two like “clear track” in a duty room, to help draw the DMs eye and assist in scanning. Cross-references are light, but not in a bad way, only used where appropriate. An otherwise empty room reads “Dusty with clear tracks through the dust, both up the stairs and towards the southern door. Filtered daylight, the smell of guano, and a slight breeze from upstairs.” Short. Terse. Each to scan. Evocative writing that paints a picture. Filtered daylight captures a vignette perfectly. A slight breeze, I love it! And room after room after room hits this way. 

Anbd there’s these references, over and over again, to the fucking scarecrows and the fucking farmers! And all the time you’re like “what the fuck is going on here Glenn, why the fuck do you keep mentioning it all Chekov’s Gun like?” And it beautiful how your mind races to fill that shit in, and then, when you reach the end you learn things, finally, by putting all of the bits together in your head. The wanderer table in the tower has “2 farmers trimming wicks” and in the wreck “1d4+1 farmers counting coins!” or “2 frightened lizardmen!” 

Glenn has created a wonderful adventuring environment. It’s not just a location based adventure in a tower. It’s the surrounding lands. It’s the sea save, the wreck, the fields, the implied locale government. He’s not spelling anything out but everything is implied and obvious. DId I mentioned the “Belligerent territorial sheep” on the craggly paths? Wonderful! 

The wanderer table just has monster entries … but with an extra word sometimes that says what needs to be said. “2 pfficious shire OHS officials.” I know the fuck how to run that shit! “Disconcerting flaggelants” I know how to run that shit! Furtive fsarmers fossicking!  Allerative and wonderful! 

Plus! Plus! The little color map of the saves has little crab eyes and claws sticking out of the pool! I love it!

Charming. The words are evocative. The situation described is more than the words on the page explicitly deliver. 

I have but two critical comments. First, the loot is book and boring. 22 gems. Diamond broach. Eyeballof seeing. Gauntlets of ogre power, elven cloak and boots. Meh. They could use a word or two to bring them to life. Second, the hooks suck ass. Your youngest sibling was on a recently wrecked ship. Yawn. No self-respecting adventurer has relatives, so as to keep themselves out of these troubles. Or, you get hired by a cleric to sketch the lighthouse. I might have just left the hooks out, altogether, and used that column for the expanded loot section. 

This is a strong, strong first entry to the contest. I often talk about how constrained a short adventure is. How you really need room to breathe in an adventure to develop things. This thing stands as a counterpoint to my statement. Sure, it’s no megadungeon, or “Real” dungeon level. But, as an isolated tower to go explore, in eight pages? Fuck yeah man! It’s doing as much as it can with the assignment given and IS a real adventure, just a short one. Great work.

Glenn made a DriveThru page just for this contest, but it’s not live yet as I type this. It should be by the time you read it. You can snag it at:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/389715/Guimonds-Light?1892600

By Chris Bissette
Loot the Room
Mork Borg

Galgenbeck is palimpsest. Tumour. A city built on the ruins of itself. Beneath the sewers the bones of the old city fester. The troll-king Niduk was exiled, driven into the depths to rot and die. Now twisted by hatred and rage he oversees the small domain he has carved for himself, in a forgotten chapel to a murdered god. Why are you here? A lost bet? A doomed quest for silver? Boredom? Does it even matter?

Yeah, It’s Mork Borg. Someone told me that this one didn’t suck. They were right.

This 36 page adventure details a sewer point-crawl with around six locations, and then a more traditional dungeoncrawl with around eleven rooms. Good formatting. Evocative writing. Some interactivity beyond stabbing. Creative situations. This one is not bad at all, even with the required Mork Borg “tilt font 23 degrees to the left” formatting that shows up at times. 

The Mork Borgians have a bad rep. I might summarize it as “someone who geeks out over layout and three color art had one conceptual idea for a room in an adventure.” Layout, as a means to facilitating comprehension by the DM, is a good thing. But, the reputation is that layout is pushed too far until IT alone becomes the focus, losing the fact that it is supposed to facilitate DM comprehension of the adventure. Pushed so far that it becomes a detriment to comprehension. And it’s clear that most Morg Borg adventure revolve around one idea, a single concept, and could almost be, or should be, one room dungeons. They don’t try to work toward something longer than two hours.
This adventure ain’t that.

Yeah, there’s some three color art (red, yellow and black, the Mork Borg “we’re PuNk!” staples.) And there’s some formatting nonsense in places, like using roman numerals on a die roll table and tilting the fucking text and varyng the font size, etc, to make a half page “art” die roll table. These are relatively minor though. The art contributes to the adventure vibe in a positive way and I can accept that you gotta throw in that table nonsense or they kick you out of the Mork Borg club. It’s just a couple of pages, anyway.

The Mork Borgians don’t get enough credit for their creativity. Generally each of the adventures has come cornerstone element that is quite interesting. The problem is that they don’t follow up. They have one idea and that’s it. Not so with this one. It delivers hit after hit, creative elements and interesting situations of diverse scope. For example, Stolen Wishes. A pile of coins under a sewer grate. Ye olde god of wishes is no more, but, if you seal a coin you’re cursed until YOU fulfill the wish. That’s fun! Good concept, nice push/pull. I’m down! And that’s just one of the ideas that this thing delivers. There are a lot, from individual room encounters to larger dungeon concepts and even treasure, that just reek of creativity. “A wooden idol bound with filthy bandages. Breaking it summons a small but vicious gore hound.” or “A darkened glass vial containing powdered sunlight. Worth a pretty penny to those who know its uses. Vampires and other undead monstrosities will give anything to see it destroyed.” Not just treasure, but a springboard to adventure also! Nicey done! How about a monster? “The finger collector

approaches in a mist of swirling spores. Visibly necrotic with tumorous growths on the shoulders and head, it clucks and clicks in a twisted mimicry of language. A necklace of fingers rattles around its neck.” Not bad! I could use a little more than “visibly necrotic”, but, still, not bad.

We get decent writing also. One sewer room has “Blood-red thorny roses sprout from the cracks between the stones.” Well, that’s a sight! A juxtaposition between a sewer environment and blood red roses, growing from cracks int he walls, should have the players shitting themselves! Formatting is pretty good to excellent. The pointcrawl sections, through the sewers, is randomized. I’m not a big fan of random for the sake of random, but, it works out ok this time. You rolls for a chamber and roll for people inside and it’s decent enough, with brief hits of evocative writing and good room formatting. Meaning a room title, a little brief overview, and then bolded bullet points with breif descriptions of DM text. The mechanics are nearby, but offset, so they don’t get in the way, and there are lots of minimaps. It’s done well. 

I would note, also, tat the Nork Borgians generally eschew a lot of up-front “how to use this adventure” bullshit boilerplate text. I’m supportive of this. I don’t need to be told how to read a stat block, nor does any other person, ever, in the history of D&D. Yes, I know I can customize the adventure, thank you, no need to tell me. And thank god they got rid of this shit. 

So, what could be improved?

There are, I think, two or three things that stand out.

First, the formatting fails in places because important things are not high enough up in the descriptions. A room with an alter in it, and little else, has no mention of it until pretty far down in the description. A room with a listing floor has no mention of it until farther in. Obvious things should be high up n the room description, generally in the player overview section, and not something for the DM to later discover as they scan the entry. “Oh, uh, yeah … and also the floor is listing a lot toward that door …” Well, fuck, Frank, you should have said so sooner! THis is a relatively common thing in this adventure. Thus the format is good but how to use the format to maximum effect falls down more than a little. 

There’s also, I think, A kind of lack of knowledge of how D&D works, or, perhaps, what the imrportant thing are. Hoks are presented as individual hooks. YOU owe someone. YOU escaped, and so on, almost like it was solo adventure. Rumors don’t always match up well to gameable content (although, “Gas from the sewers does funny things to the light, and what you see can’t be trusted.” is a great fucking rumor, for the obvios reasons!) One room has a ceiling that hides chitterring things … with no mention of creatures, so I assume they are just noises? There IS anunderstanding of some design elements … the troll king is foreshadowed rather well, for example, but there is also a kind of “individual rooms” theme rather than a “cohesive whole” theme. I’m not talking a funhouse set piece, or the need to themne every room, but a little more of a wholistic view of the adventure would have served the final eleven room dungeon well. And, man, loud rings bells are likely to be heard from more than one room away?

But, it’s not a bad adventure. It’s just not a ten. It’s creative, the writing is evocative which helps the DM run it, it’s formatted well, and it’s more than four rooms … it’s an actual adventure, which may be a first for a Mork Borg product? Good job. Good enough that, if I can remember, I’ll go looking for other Loot The Rooms to review.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is nineteen pages, showing you both parts of the pointcrawl and the dungeon. Check it out! I like it!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/363891/Treasures-Of-The-Troll-King