Dwarrowdeep

Posted on August 24, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Greg Gillespie
Self Published
S&W
Levels 1-7

Gundgathol lies in ruin. Over 250 years ago, an evil host rose from the underdark and pushed the dwarves out of their ancestral mountains. Since that time, orcs and worse have defiled their sacred halls. In recent days, the high dwarven clerics cast their runestones and read the portents: the time has come to retake Gundgathol. Are you brave (or fooloish) enough to enter Dwarrowdeep?

This 336 adventure attempts, once again, to do Moria. It has specific keys, using about half its page count, for about thirteen different areas, and then some D1 hexcrawl & procedural generation for other Moria locations. It’s using a B2-like descriptive format. Do you want that slightly generic feel? Are you willing to put up with doing your own maps (using geomorphs) and keying them and having a generic-ish vibe? Great, then this is for you. 

I am, clearly, not having this shit anymore. 

It’s another attempt at Moria. Moria is too big to key so you get a hex crawl map to get you from location to location, ala D1, and then some rules for using provided geomorphs to create levels and deeps, and some rules on how to populate them. So, you get some DMG like tables and then, the last step, step 15, is “Interpret the Results.” Great. Bring it to life, he means. If I wanted to do that I’d write my own from scratch. I’m not buying an adventure to create it from scratch, procedurally. I’m buying an adventure so I DON’T have to do that. Just grab the old Moria supplement and the DMG and crank some shit out. Why, exactly, do you need this booklet? “But Bryce, how else can you do Moria?” Well, maybe, don’t do fucking Moria if you can’t figure it out. Besides, the Fellowship Moria thing was just a trip through it, not a delve. 

Ok, so, no, some of you are not going to be happy with that analysis. Let us, instead, forget all about the procedural generation thing. Let’s pretend it doesn’t exist. Let’s instead review the maps/keys/areas that are presented. This is six entrance areas and seven other location sites, most of which have 100 or so rooms, or more. (with a notable exception in the ruined tower on the mountain peak that has a dragon.) Let’s just review that, shall we? After all, I don’t really care how much something costs, or background shit or any of that. Let’s just look at the value we’re getting for our $35 for those thirteen areas.

“Four Dwarven Skeletal Guards AL: CE, AC: 4, HD: 1, HP: 8, 7, 5, 4, #AT: 1, DMG: 1d6, lay on the floor here. They burn with malice for the living. One has a pouch with 3d6gp and another has a Seax Knife +1.”

Laying on the floor! Burning with malice for the living! Have you ever read such majesty before on the written page?! Does your heart not leap with joy at the prospects of running this room?! Are you not entertained?! No? You’re not? Ah, then how about this little gem of a room:

“The Orc Rat-Master AL: CE, AC: 6 (Studded and mShield), HD: 1, HP: 5, #AT: 1, Weapon: Whip (1d4), Scimitar (1d6), and Dagger (1d4), Treasure: 5gp, 8ep, 9sp, 2cp, uses this room as his quarters. Under a stone in the floor, under his bed of dirty furs, is a Huge Broken Pale Green Variscite (20gp), a Large Transparent Green Augelite (24gp), and a Small Deep Blue Azurite (20gp).” 

Of course! Masterful!

There’s nothing here. It’s just a hair above a minimalistic keying style. Sure, there’s some rooms that have more text. To no real effect. There are no real evocative descriptions anywhere in this. There is, though, padding: “The Ruined Temple of Thaneduhr: This rough- hewn temple to Thaneduhr All-Father was defaced and defiled by the orcs. It now lies in ruin.” That’s a meaningless couple of sentences, especially to start with. It goes on to describe a large statue with the face changed to that of the orc god, rubble, a bloody altar, and some bodies and chained prisoners. There’s some potential here, but it’s described lifelessly. The rooms are just padded out with stats and what the monster is wielding, and treasure. If this is removed you may get, mostly, one sentence per room. “The orcs here are wagering over a fight between two stirge” The alcove contains a pile of decaying corpses infested with rot grubs. Something partially buried in the dirt gleams at the back of this dead end. There’s no life in any of this. I’d have much preferred to gloss over the stats and weapons and instead have an extra sentence or two to bring the aggressively genetic minimalism to life. Because that’s what you should be paying for in an adventure.

I can roll on a table. I can find a program to roll on a table for me and spit out a generic dungeon. This is not the heart of D&D. The heart of D&D is the magic of imagination and the weirdness of the interactivity. That’s what you’re paying a designer for. Otherwise just go play some Angband. 

Barrowmaze had some life. The towers thing had some life. The Caverns thing was, as is this, aggressively minimal and generic in a way that doesn’t work with the adventure. This needs A LOT more of step 15. A LOT more of it. 

“Dwarrowdeep is the single largest dwarven themed adventure in the history of role-playing games.” I don’t love you, you don’t love me. Da Da Da”

This is $35 at DriveThru.There’s no preview because it’s a zip file blah blah blah. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/384269/Dwarrowdeep?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 102 Comments

Shadow of the Devourer

Posted on August 22, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Gaz Bowerbank
Self Published
5e
Level 4

Stop The Ritual, Save The World! An evil cult holds sway over the settlement of Temple’s Shadow. Rumours abound of a nefarious ritual to summon a demon from the abyss to consume all the Devourer Cult’s enemies! Who will put a stop to the desperate plans of the deranged cult and ensure chaos isn’t unleashed on an unsuspecting world?

This 36 page adventure, a review request, uses about 25 pages to describe a Dark Tower like environment of a small town and three ruined/cultist temple pyramids. The designer has a witty writing style and a talent for situations, but its writing is way Way WAY too long, making it unusable. And the map choice sucks shit.

I’m working through my Requested list, so, if you requested something expect to see it soon-ish. 

The designer, Gaz, seems to run a long-standing podcast. I’m sure his listeners loved this adventure. I, however, will never run it.

The basic set up is a desert town, most of which is controlled by a cult. There are three nearby pyramid ruins. Each has a different cult faction in it. Yeah, the cults kind of at war with itself, as the leader tries to summon a demon. It’s not totally unlike the general setup from Dark Tower. It’s a classic concept for a reason, giving someone a lot of room to work through a lot a different things going on.

Gaz has a breezy style that interjects sly humor in to the writing. It’s not humor, per se. Humor in adventures sucks shit. No, Gaz interjects some situations which are darkly comedic, general in a manner that pushes towards farcical, but never reaching it. An NPC, for example, in the market yells about weapons for sale, only one careful owner. Some of which are covered in blood. He doesn’t linger on it too long, or push it too far. They are almost asides to the DM at times, and generally all advance the game, or at gameable content, in some way. He’s not taking himself too seriously, but also isn’t writing jokes. It’s a style, pushing closer to farce than not, that I can really get behind and makes reading the adventure breezy. 

He’s also got a certain talent for creating situations. You meet a small crying child in one pyramid room, the abandoned pyramid. They sit outside a charnel house room, full of bodies, the chil noting its parents are inside. Everything up to this point leads to this being believable … in spite of the child actually being a succubus. Or, a group of prisoners and a small enemy cul t faction hold up in a section of the dungeon … starving, making raids, the cultiss on edge about the prisoners .. and the wail of a nearby banshee keeping everyone on edge. There’s shit going on, a decent amount. It’s relatable. And relatable content is GOOD content, making it easy for the DM to riff on and the players to accept. I wish I knew, better, what makes content relatable. It really is a differentiator. He also interjects good advice at times, like having all of the NPC’s appearing to be short on time, to give the illusions things are going on. THings are happening, to put a time pressure feeling onthe PC’s. 

He’s making an attempt with the format, integrating small sections of bullet text, a cross-reference table for cult faction beliefs, mini-maps, and icons to denote which rooms belong to which faction. NPC’s get some brief describer words (sweaty human, obnoxious, barely clothed) to help the DM run them. The NPC describer words, in particular, work very well. I understand what he is trying to do with the faction icons, but I don’t think it really helps at all in a meaningful way. And the bullets … well …

It’s also an unrunable adventure. By which I mean it’s such a pain in the ass to run that I am never going to run it. I’ll select any of a hundred others before this one, simpler to run and just as good in design. And that’s the game a designer is playing today, folks. You’re competing against every adventure ever published, ever. And while I’m fan of supporting new designers over the older content, there’s STILL enough new stuff that hits all the marks to recommend it over this. Adventures need to be GOOD to make it to the table. Evocative writing. Interactivity. And easy to run at the table. And this is not that.

First, let us discuss the map. Each room entry has a little mini-map next to it, showing the room in questions, highlighted. That is your map. That’s it. Oh, there’s a larger map in the appendix, but it’s more a players map, unnumbered. Of course, the mini-maps are unnumbered also. ONLY THE ROOM SHADING INDICATES THIS IS THE CORRECT ROOM. So, to find a room you have to thumb through things to find the correct room, by its shaded entry. It’s fucking nuts. Why the fuck wouldnt you just number the damn things like a normal keyed dungeon? Numbereing works fucking fantasticfor exploration adventures … which this is. Is the room they are going to before or after this current room in the adventure text? Who the fuck knows, thumb both directions until you find the shaded room. It’s fucking crazy. There is no way in fucking hell I’m gdoing that, which means I get to number the rooms with I want to run this. Or, buy something else that does it for me …

And Gaz’s writing is way WAY too long. Remember those bullet points I mentioned, for rooms? Well that’s not all. First you have to slog through four or so LONG paragraphs of text. And then you get some bullet points summarizing what you just read. But, not enough to run the room with. It’s fucking nuts, again. Four paragraphs?! You want me to read that and refer to it while I’m running this room? No way! And it’s almost all padding.

Here’s a room called Preparation Chamber: 

“Here the important members of the cult prepare for high ceremony, none more supreme than this one. Hanging on hooks are robes and accoutrements of ritual. Shining slivered bowls hold scented oil and water; incense and spices sit in colourful powder cones next to delicate burners; parchments and books languish on carved walnut lecterns.

From the archway to the west can be heard the chanting of Snevets Zab, as he works to summon The Decapitator to aid him. Here also, are the most loyal and fanatical of the high priest’s followers, attending to the ritual and representing a guard for their leader (see Cultist Mob in the Appendix). They fight to the death, assured a glorious reincarnation awaits them, should they perish”

The first sentence is complete padding. The first in the second paragraph over reveals. And the second paragraph either over reveals or is confusing. Are they in this room of the next room? And can’t I have a page number for that cult mob, to help me find it? And isn’t most of the text an aside, not really pertaining to the running of the adventure? As I said, I can get behind an occasional aside, but too much, with too much padding, all combine to make a text that it hard as fuck to scan. And text that is hard to scan is hard to run. You gotta read through everything and hold it in your head, which is impossible. 

Your encounter locations need to be focused. You’ve got to put some effort in to them. And by SOME I mean A LOT. First, you gotta come up with an idea. Then write it. And you need to edit it. HARD. Make sure it is evocative. Is important stuff up high. Have you pruned it back to just whats needed, but not destroyed the evocative nature of the room? Have you integrated it in to the other rooms? Edit Edit Edit. Sweat over it. This is what adventure writing is. This is the hard part. And, this is what will separate your adventure. It will make it good. It will turn it from something that is forgotten shoverware in to something that people will talk about. It’s not that appendix shit. It’s not all that background garbage you put in up front. It’s not how well you balanced the thing or adhered to the rules. It’s the fucking encounter descriptions. Alive. Interactive. And easy to scan/run at the table. Yeah, sure, you can do a four paragraph room entry. Room after room. And you can make it good. And easy to run at the table. But you are still gonna work it. You’re gonna work it as hard as a terser entry. The players just walked in to the fucking room. I glance down at the page for one second. ONE SECOND. Count one one thousand. By then I need enough to begin to run the room. There are a lot of ways to get there. But that’s what your selected format, your editing, has to be able to do. And it better be an evocative room description also. I want something that comes alive in my mind. 

You know what? This adventure actually has a tl/dr section. If you have to put in a tl/dr then you should know you’ve got a problem. Yeah, ok, I support adventure summaries. But a tl./dr?

“Whatever use this room once had” Ug! Padding! The death of adventure writing.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is twelve pages, and the ;ast three show you some rooms. So, good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/382966/Shadow-of-the-Devourer?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 2 Comments

The Obsidian Anti-Pharos

Posted on August 20, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Alex Mayo
LotFP
LotFP
Low Levels

1631 – A strange island materializes off the cost of Plymouth, England. At the center f the island stands a lighthouse, but instead of warning nearby ships of danger, it hypnotically draws them to the island’s deadly shores. Where did this island come from, and what is the source of its occult power?

This 24 page digest adventure details a tower with nine rooms along with a small island with two tribes on it. Rife with errors, it’s another Wizard Tower Out Of Time adventure … combined with the signature LotFP screw ending. It’s an ok job, but 22 pages for what it is seems long, and the loot seems quite low for the risk involved.

Ok, so, lighthouse shows up ten miles off shore, shooting strange lights up in to the sky. Ships within ten miles get hypnotically drawn to it never to appear again. On the island, full of thick woods, are two tribes of humans at war with each other, and a black obsidian tower in the middle that they consider holy. It’s actually a wizards tower, cast back in time, and the tribesmen are the former servants, now in warring factions. Inside, a trick to getting in to, you maybe get to the top and turn off the light. And get screwed by the wizard who shows up at just the right time. This is all pretty much the standard LotFP formula for a location like this, with the usual assortment of tricks and traps. 

There are a few standout portions to the adventure. The two warring tribes are an interesting concept, each having a color theme that they paint themselves … and try to paint the tower doors. There’s a nice “tree starfish” monster mentioned that I think would be fun in a thick forest setting. There’s a prison room that is an interesting “figure it out on your own” room. You’re on a platform, surrounded by an acid pool. A keycard in the acid, visibly. Another platform, 40 feet away. Fuck around a find out. No real solution obviously presented, just a challenge for the party to overcome. Nice! Another room has a mechanical crock with its mouth open. You have to reach in to pull out a key from its stomach. A Classic! 

Also, there are two keys and picking the wrong one will get you attacked. Also, there’s no way to know which witch is which. Its hooks are lame, being shipwrecked or getting paid 1000sp each to Stop The Light by the merchants guild. The lights on top of the tower are it searching the cosmos for the wizards mind to resurrect him … which happens just as the characters enter the room with his body. Uh huh. I don’t really mind the LotFP screw job endings; its a little Broodmother SkyFortress/Shake Up Your Worldy. Which is fine. But, the treasure total being about 2500sp … and all from the croc encounter? That seems a bit harsh to me. 

The thing is rife with editing errors. I think its set in Plymouth … although Portsmith is mentioned as well. Pretty sure that’s a mistake? The text claims light is marked on the map … but I don’t think it actually is. The tribes use blue and yellow paint … but in another place red paint is mentioned as a color … Yellow and Blue make green, right?  Other sentences are clearly missing the first phrases of the sentence. “The adventure with the adventurers shipwrecked on the island.” That the entire first sentence of the second hook. Just weird mistakes an editor should have caught. 

Other things are weird, from a design standpoint. The hatch in to the tower has nine random locations around the island map … but it also appears randomly on the wandering monster table? And that island map is hard to call a map, not really functioning as one at all. I don’t get how you are supposed to use it at all. Basically, draw a big circle and place a dot in the center. Now just randomly throw nine numbers on the map, for the hatch locations. Everything is heavy forest. Scale is one inch is one mile. Uh … sure man. 

Speaking of one mile … the island is four miles across. The center is a big clearing. Let’s say, 1.5 miles from the shore to the clearing. 5280 feet in a mile, so, roughly 8000 feet to get to the center from the shore. The party moves at ? speed in the forest. Let’s generously say 120 feet per turn, unencumbered movement, 40’ with the rough terrain/forest penalty. So, 40 per turn. You make a wandering monster check, a 1 on a d4, ONCE PER TURN. That’s roughly 200 checks, right? With roughly 50 encounters? On a table with ten entries? Is that serious? Did I fuck it up? Did the designer fuck it up, or the editor? It can’t possibly be meant to be played that way.

So you get to the island. Each tribe has about, idk, 80 warriors in it, let’s say. You need a keycard from one tribe to get in the tower. A device from the other tribe can locate the grate that the key opens, the hatch, that teleports around randomly. And you have to figure all of this out. And you have to figure out not to touch the doors, which teleport you to the acid prison. I don’t know how you do this. There’s a dude on the wandering table that also has a keycard, so, maybe you just murder him and then wander until you find a hatch? None of it makes sense. I’m guessing this is some handwavey shit, in play, and then they tried to write it down.

And the tribe descriptions? The little sections that describe them? They don’t mention the keycard or the hatch locator device. That’s just mentioned in the text. What the fuck man? Why? And, along with all of this, you need to figure out the solution to one puzzle is turning four bedpost knobs in a specific order, with no clues. And you don’t get to the end of the adventure without figuring that out? I’m all for letting the party figure things out, but, some of this just seems whacko crazy, especially for a low level party with no divination magic to speak of.

I don’t know. The room descriptions tend to the column or page length, which seems like a lot. Some mechanics, a room description, and then more mechanics. It tends to flow pretty well, but not putting the description up front still pisses me off.

It’s a wizards tower. It’s ok. Nothing too special. No real cash treasure. Ok set up, but could use a good fleshing out, both outside the tower and in.

I don’t know how much this thing is. I bought it at GenCon, so, it cost a corset, two skull candles, and some token thing for keeping strict time records for an Indi RPG. Also, I got a selfie with Raggi! Also, Kelvin & Alex are the only people writing for LotFP anymore? All of the recent releases have their name on it? Also, I got to hear some rando fan ask him about the Z Man. I’m taking pity on Raggi since I’m sure he’s had to weather this conversation about a gajillion times before. It was fun watching this play out, though, as a nameless and clueless bystander.

I don’t know where/how to buy it, not in person. It’s on on the LotFP storefront yet, or on the DriveThru page yet.

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 7 Comments

Isle of the Succubus

Posted on August 17, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Michael Robinson
Rutibex
OSR
Level ?

Can you see through the Succubus many disguises?

This forty page “hexcrawl” describes an island and associated area on level 69 of the Abyss. You walk around doing nothing and meet Midi the Succubus in a bunch of disguises, randomly. It’s not an adventure.

I thought the concept of a Succubus lair, fleshed out, would be interesting so I bought this. I am not amused. This runs painfully close to being a joke adventure, if it can be called an adventure.

Of the forty pages, twenty are devoted to monster stats. There are ten locations on Midi’s island and about twenty more on the surrounding hex map. Midi’s island is supposed to be a hex map also, and looks like it, but there are no hex lines and there’s no numbering for the hexes … so good luck hex crawling that map. You get a wandering monster table to help support a hex crawl play, but it’s just a list of monsters with nothing more, and, for it being an island, no “on the waves” notes for sailing around the Abyss. The maps, therefore, are an abject failure.

Midi gets more than few pages of description. You get five entire pages listing all of her disguises, maybe twenty in all. Every one of them matches her own personality, a bimbo/cutsy type (with accompanying art style) with a heart of evil. Maybe. You get a page of motivations for Midi, about twenty or so, of which about half make her misunderstood or somehow allies of the party. Which doesn’t really jive with her “attach the party repeatedly” thing that she has going on. None of them are very interesting, or detailed more than a sentence or two. This, in particular, is a mistake. These sorts of variables/tables in an adventure do little good. It would be far far better for the designer to have picked one and ran with it. Make the island, and the surrounding hexes, mostly integrated in to Midi’s plotting. Add additional information for the GM to help them along. Make the thing a cohesive whole. But, no. Instead we get a Midi disguise of “Pepper Minstix – An elf lost on this island. She needs help to get back to her workshop” To be clear, that a Santa’s workshop elf, as the art shows us. Midis is supported, in combat, by a small section that has doing hit and runs, and dimension dooring away. So, she gets 500’ away when its her turn. You’re told to roll some wanderers for her support troops if she ambushes the party … but the ambush stuff is never handled on a table or anything. You’re told she’s got a veritable army of people on the island who REALLY love her … but nothing more than that and it never comes up again. She also dimension doors a party member 400’ up in combat .. but I don’t think Dimension Door works like that?

The locations on the island and hexes around it are trying for a hex crawl type vibe. “A corrupted Abbot of Gollidar (Rowan Holmes) is in charge of the eye factory. He is concerned because the new shipment of halflings have not arrived and he needs them for the eye chamber” or “The jails of Midi, where the Rabbit Prince is on trial for crimes against his people. Little does he know that everyone in the jury are not his peers but transformed Quasits!” Hex crawls are a tough encounter type, I think. You need something that is both self-contained and ties in to the other hexes, sometimes. You need something going on, a situation, for the party to get involved in, or use as a resource, or something like that. Not all hexes, certainly, but that needs to be a general vibe. The party is going to want something to do and/or get invested in. Those descriptions locations don’t do that. It’s better than the Isle of the Unknown encounters, but not by much. There’s no real motivation for the party to do anything at all. It’s like these locations are scoped too large for ad-hoc usage at the table. And perhaps that’s it. In a hex crawl the DM is going to making things up on the fly for everything and trying to riff on things to tie the adventure together. And this doesn’t support the DM in that manner. “This grotto is actually the mouth of a particularly perverted and huge demonic toad. It encourages guests and visitors to vacation within the resort he has constructed in his mouth.” Can you do that with that description? Maybe? I guess? But you’ll need other hexes and NPC’s to tie in to that, and the adventure doesn’t do that at all.

This is just disappointing on so many levels. Clearly, the designer just wanted a cutesy shape changing succubus running around and everything else was an afterthought. The core concert is a good one, the central idea. A succubus nin her “lair” so to speak, and using her charm abilities to their logical conclusion. But none of that really happens here. 

This is $1.50 at DriveThru. The preview is just a quick one, so useless.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/393213/Isle-of-the-Succubus?1892600

Also, Mohr got me again with his House of Falknor. Bought, but not gonna review.

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

The Perilous Puppeteer of Piepenburg

Posted on August 15, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By James the DM
Self Published
OSR
Level ?

Terror!  A string of disappearances in the charming town of Piepenburg has left the townsfolk on edge.  Can the players discover the culprit’s identity before the unthinkable happens?

This 32 page adventure is an investigation in to some murders in a small village. A small village of ten buildings, one of which is a toy store. It’s trying, and has the form down, but the specifics and details are a jumble that don’t make sense.

So there’s this group called The Storytellers Collective or something, and they have a writers workshop every month or quarter or something. I tend to get requests for reviews from them around this time, or people pointing me at thier adventures. I don’t understand completely, but somehow I’m on the radar. I got a request to review this one, but not by the designer, so, here we go!

It’s amurder mystery. Murder mysteries face a challenge in D&D, especially OSR D&D. Why does the party give a fuck that someone ELSE is stabbing things? Thus the hook is usually that you get assigned to investigate, or your brother lives in the village or hoping that the party has enough humanity to want to help a random village with random murders in it. And those are the hooks here. Nothing but throw aways, with nothing to them other than what I just typed. Nothing compelling. 

And then there’s the issue with magic. When you can detect a lie, or question a dead body, where’s the mystery? Usually designers go through contortions to solve this, ith invisibility, rings of mind shielding and all that crap. The solution is to make it low level, which is what happened here, but, then, the designer also includes this warning “The adventure also assumes that magic is rare and strange, and that spells to communicate with the dead or detect lies do not exist.” Good luck with that man! It’s like writing an adventure with spaceships and space opera for D&D … uh, sure, but you do realize this is a fantasy setting, right?

Ok, so, small village. Murders in it. About ten buildings that are businesses. The usual. Inn. Church. Mayors house. Guild house. Toymaker. Wait, what? Ok, I set fire to it, kill whoever comes out. Game over. Seriously, man, you gotta do better than this. The village is too small for such a specialized building. It’s obviously him. 

The plot has an initial first encounter, with random villagers getting a brawl in the town square, citing the shitty shitty longtime advice of “getting your players rolling dice!” It’s a non-lethal brawl. If you kill people then everyone turns on the party and the mayor wants answers! But, also, it’s ok, he really wants you to solve the murders also. ?!  If you don’t want to deal with this then don’t put that party in that position. Seriously. You set them up for a combat and then yank the rug out And then try to fix that. If you don’t want them to just kill everyone then don’t do your initial combat with a village brawl.

It’s this kind of design stuff that’s prevalent all throughout. Basic things. Along with even simpler things. Your brawl is interrupted by a scream (the second time a row your scene is interrupted by a scream from elsewhere, transitioning to the net scene.) This time it’s the wife of a dead guy, missing two weeks, holding his mutilated body at the edge of the town square. So. He’s been missing two weeks? And no one saw his body at the edge of the town square? And his wife is the one to find him? Uh huh. 

Read aloud reveals too much. “An adorned statues of a long deadhero”. The party doesn’t know that. Describe it, not the conclusions drawn from it. In the first body read aloud, don’t reveal the fact that there are no footprints, but describe the body, which the designer doesn’t do. And absolutely do NOT have the read-aloud say “The people of Piepenburg recognize him as a skilled healer, but many distrust his methods as “ungodly.” You’re commenting. Don’t do that. Describe. 

Oh, oh! One of the rumours is “Hans the toymaker made my daughter a lovely doll!” This is in the middle of rumours about evil raiding goblins and undead in the graveyard and the like. Just horrors everywhere, and a seemingly random bit of info about the toymaker. Doesn’t matter, since we’ve already burned his place down though. 

There’s a chase scene, because, drama, I guess. If you don’t make your roll then “as fog swirls in and prevents the characters who failed to keep up from making it to the combat.” Great.. Fog rolls in. Deus Ex much? And if you kill the baddie you’re chasing? IDK, he’s important to the plot. I guess you win? Some advice here would be nice.

Descriptions are too wordy, containing useless info like Frank the barber having “A former adventurer ennobled for his rescue of the Countess von Nachtingal,” useless. Means nothing. Advances nothing in the play of the game. A room, described in readaloud, mentions no rug and yet its a major important point in the room. 

Nothing is really described about the odies up to this point. No CSI for the players, or questioning their families, or looing at their graves or anything. 

On the plus side, it does use bullet points to convey information about what people know It does this well. 

The format here is not bad. The basics are ok. The text needs a heavy edit to keep things focused on play at the table, with reward to relevance and what comes first in a description. The inconsistencies need to be cleaned up. Things need to make sense, in a fantasy setting. Just nothing here to work with in a useful way.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages of the single column version. It shows you the bullets, but they make more sense in a double column view. It’s not a very strong preview 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/404684/The-Perilous-Puppeteer-of-Piepenburg?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 13 Comments

The Scorched Citadel

Posted on August 13, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Carl Ellis
Broken Arch Publishing
OSE
Low to Mid Levels

Beneath a dying sun, uncount- ably many years into the future, the Scorched Citadel lies in the ruins of a once great city. A wide, lazy river meanders near- by, chocked with nenufares and water dwelling creatures. 5 great towers rise from a hill like rotting fingers, the hill itself a great necropolis of moss- covered graves, crypts, and mausoleums. Squat, crumbling buildings radiate from the Citadel, becoming part of the ground as the wasteland edges towards the flickering outpost of civilisation.

This 45 page digest adventure/setting revolves around a ruined city, in a Book of the New Sun/Dying Earth type setting. Containing several civilized areas, all in a small area, and a few nine-ish room dungeons to explore, it is at once too large and too general, missing the mark of a hex crawl and a dungeon. 

Ha! I did it! I saw an adventure titled The Great Rift, was intrigued, and THEN saw it was by Bloch and avoided it! A first for me in controlling my unbridled enthusiasm! Yeah! Or, maybe, condolences on my loss of innocence? 

Yeah, so, this thing. The Scorched Citadel. Sounds cool, right? Meh. It’s a setting, really, with a couple of dungeons. All in 45 digest pages. Of which about 25% is a bestiary, etc. So, about 33 pages. That’s not much for about 45 hexes and four or so dungeons and five or so populated areas. That means each gets about one or maybe two pages of detail. That’s not much. At all. 

What you get, then, is something quite abstracted. Rumors are somewhat generic. “Eternal life lies in side the citadel” … which, while probably a relatable rumor for a place of power, gets old when they are all like this. We get descriptions like “Library. Contains records and medical texts.” Well, coloured me inspired. “Skeletons. 3d4 appear upon entering for either direction. TT O.” Ah ha! A delightful game ahead! We get this same level of details, maybe one sentence, maybe of something interesting but probably something generic and certainly abstracted, for all of the locations, dungeon or town. This is a problem. There’s nothing really to hang your hat on here. Yu’re going to riff, continually. You’re going to make things up, continually. And, I know, we all do that. You HAVE to do that. But the question is to what extent? There’s just not much to inspire the DM here. The setting is, to me personally, appealing in a Dying Earth kind of way, but you need more text, evocative, to give the DM SOMETHING to go with. Even a hex crawl sets up a situation to deal with (well, a good one does anyway) and doesn’t just say “Skeletons. TT O” You need SOME specificity, or, I would perhaps assert, you are not actually an adventure … which will not doubt piss off the people in to extreme minimalism … but fuck them. 

And, also, further abstracted. In a nineteen story tower, a centerpiece of the town, we get: “Levels 3-19: Abandoned dormitories” I get it, you want something impressive, but, also, you can’t stat the entire thing. Of the 45 hexes only a few have dungeons/encounters, with the rest showing potential dungeons and “The hexes are only partially stocked with content from this module. Sure, leaving some room for the DM is a time honored tactic. But, also, when EVERYTHING is abstracted, down to the dungeon encounters themselves, we must instead examine the choices made.

There’s an appropriate level of zooming in/out for an adventure of a certain type. A dungeon needs a certain level of detail. (Misguided people think that there’s room here for different people to like different levels of detail.) A town needs a different level. A region needs a different level of detail. Your product needs the match the level of zooming in/out that you are doing, providing enough information, barely, for the DM to riff on. Preserving the ability of the DM to scan the needed text and run the specific thing, quickly, before the players phones come out. That’s going to be different for a dungeon room than it is for a city than it is for a continent. 

The final room of the most important dungeon, the quest the party has been running after, is: “Heart Chamber. The heart itself is interred under a central glass floor. The walls are covered with screens and technological devices. A camp and supplies are in the southeastern corner. Anders is here, working at one of the devices. Tagros is attending him.” This is uninspired writing. Covered in technological devices. *yawn*

This is $6 at Drivethru. The preview is seventeen pages, more than enough to get a sense of writing style and level of detail.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/404655/The-Scorched-Citadel?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 14 Comments

Underfurnace Excavation

Posted on August 10, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Jeff Simpson
Buddyscott Entertainment Group
OSR 
Levels 5-7

Long before the human settlement of Knup-Tra sprang up, the miners of the Magnitogorsk clan uncovered an ancient hall deep in the Mountains of Fire. A strange being taught them secrets  that led to their downfall. Are you brave enough to plumb the depths of the Underfurnace of the Mountain King and find what caused an entire dwarven settlement to virtually disappear

This twelve page adventure features four dungeon levels and a town with about fifty rooms. It uses a minimalistic style, with a few flourishes in the rooms, ala B2. This results in easy to scan rooms, but an environment that is somewhat less evocative, and interactive, then I generally think the minimal standard of quality should be today. But, I don’t hate it. Which is a major accomplishment.

A dude, doing his own maps and art? Rock on man, that’s the spirit of D&D! As is the mixture of B/X and 1e FF/MM that the adventure uses … just like we all did in the 80’s! I had high hopes for this … and was only moderately disappointed!

I want to take a look at the town, first. There’s a little map for it, but that’s probably not relevant. What is interesting is the page of town businesses. You get a bolded first word, like Carpenter, which is followed by the business description. Of which there are like seventeen. All on, essentially, one page,. He can accomplish this because the businesses just have the interesting bits described. “Run by the bickering couple of Silksif and her husband Granmar, much of their arguing comes from the fact that they are currently broke.” Just enough personality to run the NPC’s as their own place, making them a little memorable, and, maybe, providing some fodder for the DM to riff off of if the town becomes some sort of frequent base. A few other businesses have something notable for sale or some such, like Reeve’s badge of office, worth 900gp, or the smithy that has a silver inlaid breastplate. It never goes in to those excesses that are frequently seen in adventures where the townfolk are described in minute but irrelevant detail, along with a russian novel length backstory that doesn’t matter. These descriptions are focused on gameplay. Which is exactly how it should be!

The dungeon, proper, is a four level design, about twelve or so rooms per level. As I noted, there are about sixteen rooms per page, about eight per column. This makes for room descriptions that are relatively short and therefore easy to scan. Generally, a format of this type needs a good sentence to setup the room and maybe one or two more expand on things. What we’re looking for here is a great little descriptive sentence, the centerpiece of the room. That could be read-aloudish or just plant an imagination seed in the DMs head. Following that we’re looking, I think, for a sentence or two about the room that could be DM notes. Maybe a little variation in that format, with a two sentence description and a few sentences of descriptions for more complex rooms, but that’s the general idea, I think, for an adventure format that is trying to squeeze in sixteen rooms per page. You just don’t have the real estate and have to make exquisite usage of what you do have. 

But that’s not what is going on here. Instead we’re getting a slightly expanded minimalism in the description, akin to the B2 room descriptions, or at least the VIBE of the B2 descriptions. “Kitchen All of the knives here are gone. 8 kobolds rummage through the empty barrels.” 

On the plus side the description starts with a keyword. You’re now oriented to the room. I know what a kitchen looks like and can ad-lib what’s in it. Plus, the information to come is now filtered through the framing of “Kitchen”, which does wonders for the imagination riffing on things and filling in holes. Then we get a very B2 description. A creature, doing something. Rummaging through empty barrels in this case. The famous example, from B2 I think, is orcs shooting dice. But, there’s not actually a description here. That’s not really very evocative. It’s better than just “Kitchen: 8 kobolds” but that’s not saying much in 2022. 

I’m gonna slap in three more room descriptions:

Mine The floor here is pooled with quicksilver broken up by a few loose stones. For every turn spent in this room, roll a save vs Poison; failure means the character will die in 1d6 hours. The quicksilver drips from the lips of a stone bust of an emaciated dwarf with sunken eyes. If the bust is disturbed, four half-petrified ghouls (AC4) burst from the walls and attack.

Grand Hall There is a large oaken table in this council chamber with a fossilized skeleton of a blue dragon. There are 4 pyroclastic golems here who have been instructed by the orc sham- an to draw a thaumaturgical circle to reanimate it. There is a 5% chance that they succeed just as the party enters the room. The golems under- stand Dwarven and Giant. 6 dwarf skeletons (3HD), 4 armed with longswords and 2 with crossbows, attack anyone entering this room.

Cave The corpse of a rust monster lies next to an un-rusted sword. Disturbing the rust monster or the sword activates a silent alarm that alerts the dwarven vampire in Area 3 of intruders.

Looking at these you can see the format clearly. A brief one sentence description and then a thing, along with a note that is usually mechanics related. The monster, the treasure, the trap, etc. But we also see a certain abstraction. “An alarm sounds” is not very much fun. A pile of bones, or tin cans, dropping from the cei;ling may be more. Or a pile, precariously stacked, that falls down. Some additional interactivity and a little bit more on the descriptive/interactive unified front. Note as well the weird Gand Hall, with some golems, notes about an Orc shaman, and then also some skeletons thrown in for good measure? Weird disconnect there. Every once in awhile you get a great line, like the quicksilver dripping from a dwarf emaciated face with sunken eyeballs … great descriptive text there! 

What the adventure needs is more of those descriptive keywords. Pushing things a little bit more in both descriptions and interactivity, as with the alarm. What we get, instead, is an almost minimal adventure much in the vein of the much beloved B2. But, it’s also 2022. We can do better than B2. 

And, I noite, I have not even touched on this being a level 5-7 adventure. For a level range like that I might want a few more complex situations to appear. As it stands, there are drow and a vampire that might roam around a bit, but the adventure is far more “individual stand alone” room based than I think I want at level seven. I should mention that mroe. Oh well.

At least, those, he didn’t fuck it up. And “It could be better” is a far measure better than “This makes me hate my life and wish I had never learned about D&D.” I don’t think this kind of things cuts it today. The splendor of Xyntillian was how much it packed, in interactivity and evocative descriptions, in to so little space. That’s the bar to shoot for,

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/403913/Underfurnace-Excavation?1892600

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

Rat King’s Sewer

Posted on August 8, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Ken Spencer
Necromancer Games
OSR Levels 4-6

Eastgate is a bustling city at the mouth of the Amrin River. As most of the adventure takes place in the sewers, and nearly all of it in an urban setting, wilderness orientated characters might find themselves at a disadvantage. Then again, the sewers are a maze and filled with all manner of deadly creature, the ability to talk to cockroaches might just prove useful.

This 28 page adventure is in a sewer with about 35 rooms to explore there and in a fey-landish/underdarkish area at the end. It’s filled with the signature “dont give a fuck” style of the Frogs, with sloppy editing, boring rooms, and an overall malaise, and not in a good way, of the writing. 

Pretty cool to see a new necromancer title, eh? It got me all worked up and excited. Necromancer did some cool things back in the day and seeing a new one got my notice. And then I opened it and it turned out to just be another Frog God title. It’s got Necromancer all over it, in name, but the house style and people involved are all Frog God. I have no idea why tey switched brands.

There is some crazy convoluted backstory about a lady coming back from the opera, attacked by thugs who kill her bodyguards. She kills all of the thugs, but loses her necklace and a rat steals the largest jewel. Turns out its a wererat who wants it to crate a portal so him and his buddies can get back home. Everyone in town goes down to the sewers to find the jewel, it says, so I’m thinking this is gonna be like Gone Fishin, but, no. The entire backstory is unrelated to the adventure at hand, it’s just a sewer crawl with a portal at the end. I have no idea why the backstory is even there, but, it is. So, whatever. What does piss me off is the sloppy integration of it. It references shit all the time in the adventure that seems to contradict the backstory, like the jewel being of little use to the rats (they critically need it for the portal?!) and them being willing to negotiate for it?! There’s also mention of a ransom request, just thrown in the text in a block of other text, that makes no sense at all?! The entire text is full of this confusing nonsense, one thing contradicting another. Even the most casual perusal reveals it, so I’m not sure what “Editing” really means in the context of a Frog God title. Err, sorry, Necromancer title. It goes on and on. The “Parfiegs” are mentioned. Out of context with little to go on. Evidently you are chasing the rats and they’ve gone through the portal already? I have no idea. I think they are a clan of humans living in the fey/underdark area? 

But, what we do get it long and extensive backstory thrown in willy nilly. “The Snarl Fangs, of the Order of the Swift Paw” …. Uh, ok. And a basilisk and gelatinous cube all get histories and backstory. That’s fucking wild. Its like the adventure is explaining WHY there’s a Cube in the sewer. Justifying it. It’s a crazy choice on how to spend your word count and creative energy. On shit that is absolutely meaningless to adventure at the table. But, no doubt perfect for people reading the adventure. 

The actual adventure is not much. The room descriptions are essentially barren, a minimalistic style that is ten expanded by providing very little meaningful information. Backstory in the rooms abound, but the actual descriptions of the environment, or creatures, is almost nonexistent. Thus there is no evocative environment, or encounter. This goes on, room after room. And it uses the Frogs house style, which is paragraph based, which makes scanning the text for actual useful information very difficult. Just a room with a sewer monster in it. Repeat. “The sheriff’s plan certainly worked; the smugglers were trapped in the tunnel. Slowly, they died of starvation or disease, but not before the leader and his closet followers had turned to cannibalism. Their corpses resurrected as a ghast and 4 ghouls.” Great. So a ghast and four ghouls. 

There’s just not much here at all, and what there is, in the larger context, is confused and makes little sense. And it’s $14. They’ve certainly made an art form out of living off of a brand a charging for it.

It’s unlikely I will review another Frog God/Necromancer title, unless I hear things have changed.

This is $14 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages, showing you the table of contents and backstory and no encounters. Joy.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/402662/Rat-Kings-Sewer-OSR?src=newest&filters=45582_2110_0_0_0?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 27 Comments

Echoes From Fomalhaut #9 – Beyond the Gates of Sorrow

Posted on August 6, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Gabor Lux
First Hungarian d20 Society
OSRIC? Nah, BX
Levels 2-4 & Level 1

Beyond the Gates of Sorrow: Shipwrecked on a northern archipelago seemingly devoid of habitation, you must explore your surroundings and find a way off these rocks… and could there be some profit in it as well? Wilderness and mini-dungeon module for 2nd to 4th level characters, 19+18 keyed locations.

The Vaults of Volokarnos: Orcs have been spotted near an ancient burial complex housing the resting places of old patrician families, and a famous warlord. The masters of the nearby town want the orcs gone… and are willing to overlook a bit of discrete grave-robbing on the side. A B/X dungeon for 1st level characters, 52 keyed areas.

This sixty page zine contains a number of articles as well as a small wilderness crawl with dungeon, and a larger stand-alone separate adventure featuring a dungeon with 52 encounters. A magnificent tribute to the older days of gaming and harkens back to the finer Judges Guild products. Terse, interactive, and building an evocative vibe by leaving room for mystery. A delight!

There are more good adventures than you will find on tenfootpole. I’m always chasing the next thing, the next designer popping up that is tilting against my expectations of BAD. This means that certain designers don’t get as much coverage as they should. They get labeled “Not A Fucking Idiot” and, mentally, I know that whatever they are releasing is good. Do you really need me to tell you that the next Dungeon Age adventure is going to be a good one? (Or, to tell you Thracia is good, for that matter?) And you know who also falls in to that category? Gabor Lux. Gabor Lux writes good adventures. And, thus, he doesn’t get as many reviews as he should. I should do something about that, but, also, I’m an ass. So who knows if I’ll follow through with my vow to review more of the good designers. Apathy is a powerful force.

And, let’s talk about that certain OD&D/BX style that I love so much. You can see it, full on, in Fight On! magazine. A certain non-standard way of running the game and in describing things. It’s not de rigueur D&D. It feels like The Old World, full of mystery and wonder and things yet to be discovered. A little bit of the Judges Guild vibe. A little bit of Arduin (is there a higher compliment in D&D?) Not the gonzo, but the feeling of mystery. And Melan brings that in full force in his Echoes of Fomalhaut zine. 

This is issue number nine and most fall in to the pattern. A few articles, tables and such about a game world that can rival ANY of the best settings. That feeling of mystery that abounds, a yearning to know more. This is a game world and you want to know more. And, then, there are usually a couple of adventuring sites. In this issue it is a wilderness hex crawl on a small chain of islands and a classic dungeon with undead, a temple, and orcs.

The wilderness crawl is on a small chain of rocky islands with almost no vegetation … or occupants. Oriented towards a shipwreck, it contains plenty for a party to salvage to find their way home again. Or, you can make friends with the HUGE giant who can wade through the sea. There’s a classic for you! The writing here, as usual, is terse. A little longer than say Xyntillan and matching more of a hex crawl style from Wilderlands, it contains locations and/or situations to stumble across. Resources, some loot, some things to get in to trouble with. And it’s got a barren feel, just like the island, but I mean that in a good way. Lonely. No real wanderers, the party makes out for landmarks and such, gathering resources and testing their luck. Flotsam in the distance … will you investigate for resources? A sad singing heard from the direction of an island … with the wind blowing through the hollowed-ut statue of a woman wearing a toga. Replete with gemstone for eyes … AND EYE RAYS! I fucking love eye rays! So, anyway, a little wandering around, doing the hex crawl thing but without hexes, and small twenty room keep to explore with an unusual vertical-oriented map that’s fun to see. A great “you were shipwrecked, now what?” adventure.

The second adventure is more traditional. A fifty or so room dungeon with some orcs in it, a cult, undead, etc. Great interactivity, up to including fonts and pools. Crypts and orcs with an order or battle. Short and terse little descriptions that contain a wealth of information, just enough to run the encounter and get the DMs juices going. Seriously, dude should write an article on how to write one of these encounters. There’s this non-standard thing goin on in it (and on the islands) that subverts things. A harpy? No, a statue. An undead? No, a couple of insect swarm or two inside of it. Doors to force. Pillars to move. Things that do things elsewhere. A great map supporting. This is the kind of old school adventure you want when you buy a product. 

My only criticism is the fucking magic items. While the +1 shields fit in well to their environment, when found, I’d prefer something a bit more. Unusual, a bit more description, something. I’d love the magic items to match the vibe of the rest of the adventure.

Buying all of the Echoes would result in a nice little library of a game world to rival Arduin, Tekumel, or any of the other better entries in the game world arena … and leave FOrgotten Realms and Greyhawk in the dusts of time.

This is $6.50 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages and you get to see a decent amount of that island crawl. Good stuff!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/386056/Echoes-From-Fomalhaut-09-Beyond-the-Gates-of-Sorrow?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews, The Best | 30 Comments

Horror in the House of Mystique

Posted on August 3, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By John Josten
Board Enterprises
OSR? Ha! That's a joke! It's actually Legend Quest
Level ?

A new legend is making its way around the city.  Some failed adventurers are claiming that they have seen an emerald that is the size of a halfling’s chest.  Not just some raw rock, but a cut, jewelry grade emerald.  A gem destined to be the stuff of legends. And the guy who saw it is willing to show anyone interested the way, as long as they agree to try and save his buddy who got left behind.  Seems like good pay!  Millions in gem wealth just to rescue somebody.  No adventurer is going to turn that down!  But it’s time to move.  You can’t wait for some other party to get there first.  Of course, it will be dangerous, but the pay day on this one is more than you have ever received before.

I hate life. Seriously. I was doing great. I was! The trauma of the best left behind I was excited to be exploring new worlds. I was even gonna snag an Echoes to review! But, then, it came. And I realized, you can never really escape from the trauma of your past. You can, perhaps, learn to control it. Manage it. Lessen it to a degree. But it’s still there. My Dungeon Magazine reviews. The insanity of the adventure design and writing that ent in to them. I had left it behind. And then THIS thing showed up via a request …

This 62 page adventure uses thirtish pages to describe thirty four rooms in a doll house. It is a prime example of why the early 90’s sucked for D&D. It is long winded and pretentious to a degree I don’t think I’ve experienced since my Dungeon reviews. Which makes sense since this is from 1994.

I have no real idea what this is meant to be. There’s a separate, seventeen page booklet for the players, to get them familiar with the game world. Which is just a D&D world reskinned with different names. And then then entire thing is laid out like its a newsletter? Here’s some places in the world. Here’s an article on why Shadowrun sucks. Here’s one on Aliens in fantasy worlds. I just do NOT get this at all. Most of this is NOT an adventure, but some zine type thing, even though the title and DriveThru entry seems to indicate that it’s primarily an adventure. Seventeen pages to get the players ready tof the game world … as if I need to continue this review …

This is, I’m going to bet, an exact replica of the adventure from 1994. Not an update. And you know this because of how terrible it is. Basically, some drow somewhere make a dollhouse for a kid. Kid grows up and put it on a table outside the dungeon entrance and if you touch the key on the table you get transported in to the dollhouse. This all takes multiple pages to explain, since it must go in to minute detail on how this works and how the players can’t destroy the dollhouse, fuck with the magic key that transports them inside, etc. God forbid they be allowed to colour outside the lines. 

We are told, of course, that “The first thing the game master must do is to make sure that every player has a character.” I am amazed and delighted. My every whim catered to. Well, it didn’t tell me when to breathe, so … you know, I almost died. 

Read-aloud is in italics. Which is hard to read in extended lengths. It can, frequently and not unusually, take three or four PARAGRAPHS to contain the read-aloud for a single room. A normal-ish room. It’s fucking nuts. It goes on and on and on. With nothing in particular. 

DM text can be just as bad. The first room is 1.5 pages long. A column is not unusual and typical. It takes a column for a hallway with some animated suits of armour in it. A spider in a kitchen takes a column. 

“This room contains a spider hanging near the ceiling. The spider is hidden from view by the webs. While large (about 2” plus legs), this is a normal spider. It was not shrunk upon entering the house and appears to be about 30” in diameter plus legs. Milendez is highly entertained by this spider and makes sure it gets enough to eat.

The spider is a poisonous web spinner. It has filled this room with webs but has not spun outside of here. It can move normally within its webs, but humanoids will be forced to chop their way through the webs. The webs will burn slowly (one cubic foot per turn) if exposed to an open flame but will not remain lit if the flame is removed. The webs can be cut, but each strand will take six points of slashing damage or twelve points of bludgeoning. The spider will dart out, bite, and dart back to cover. Anyone attempting to follow the spider (through the webs) must succeed in a Strength task or be caught in the webs. The spider will withdraw to the far corner if the party begins to cause severe damage to the web’s structure. It will continue to attack from here, but it will also be trying to hide. [stats]

The seemingly best maneuver here would be to use something to burn the webs from a distance, perhaps a torch tied to a long pole. Throwing oil might help clear a good sized space, but not enough to avoid the spider’s speedy attacks. Even if all the webs can be burned out while the spider is in the room, the spider is unlikely to take additional damage from being in her own burning webs. If there is any opportunity for her to avoid being burned along with her

own webs, she will use it. A fireball should clear the webs, but therefore would only do normal damage to her.”

Jesus Fuck man, seriously?

The final insult is the treasure table. For each item found it lists the value class , it’s grade, its cost for scrap, resale, cost at the source and cost in the city. For every bit of treasure. I hate mu fucking life.

All of this for a fucking dollhouse. That isn’t even that great! A few toy soldier encounters and the like. Nothing really too out there or overly fun. Nothing to play people against each other. Nothing really dynamic. No updates AT ALL, I’m guessing, over the original 1994 adventure.

Life is pain and trauma lives forever.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. You get to see that Shadowrun article. Joy.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/403203/Horror-in-the-House-of-Mystique-aka-All-About-NonStandard-Adventures–Game-Masters-edition?1892600

Posted in Do Not Buy Ever, Reviews | 46 Comments