What Lies Below

Posted on September 15, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Thom Wilson
ThrowiGames
Five Torches Deep
Level 1

What Lies Below takes characters into a druid’s tomb below a rotten stump. The characters will quickly find that the druids buried within dabbled in magic and enchantments well outside their traditional schools.

This eight page adventure features an eleven room druid lair under a tree stump using five pages. Interactivity is rather basic. I’m going to spend most of the review talking about the ThrowiGames Sensory Descriptive Style format, and it’s failings, and what it means for writing a good description and organizing information for the DM to use.

So, lair under a tree stump. Some earthen cave-type rooms with a few undead and a spider in it.Interactivity is spares, and you’re gonna have to take my word on that, as I want to talk about Evocative Writing and Formatting. In this case, the interrelation between the two. This is the format used in the adventure for rooms. Other rooms mauve have other sense also, like “Taste” or “Sense” or “Exits.”

<pre>

Area 1: Tree Stump Entrance

A chain around the base of the rotting tree stump drops into a dark hole below.

GM Notes: Although rusty, the chain can support up to 500 pounds of weight.

Quick View: Wide, rotten, hollow stump. 

Detailed View: Rusty, thick-linked chain. Various animal footprints around the hole.

Listen: Air whistles up through the hole below the stump.

Smell: Rotting tree and vegetation.

Secrets: The hole is discovered with a DC 9 check. Exits: A hole below the stump drops over 40 feet.

</pre>

What we have is an attempt to well describe the room. Laudable, especially bringing in other senses, however I would argue that the formatting fails and that because of that the Evocative nature of the room also fails. Looking at the very first sentence, the chain around the base of the rotting stump … what’s the purpose of that line? Is it read-aloud? If so it may be TOO terse, ignoring such great features as the air whistling up, which should be obvious, and the rotting vegetation line. Is it a general overview of the room for the DMs needs? Then why the extra lines for the whistling and the rotting? 

There’s a Quick view section … how does this differ from the initial opening line? What is it adding that the opening line isn’t? Just repeating data, in the same way that the “Exits” portion is? Listening and Smelling are relatively specific actions. Further, both, in this rooms case, help set the general mood of the room and you, generally, want the players exposed to that mood initially, rather than making them “tease it out” of the DM. (With exceptions for things like a Revelation.) Further, the format, separated on different lines, with things breaking up the relevant sections from each other, takes more time to scan over and grok. When giving the initial room description you’re reading the room title, the initial italics line, the quick view, the listen, the smell, the exits, and probably the GM notes and secrets, all in order to synthesize the description in to something to relate to the players. 

This gets to the issue of being limited by a format instead of being enabled by it. I’ve almost always encountered this in adventure that, as this one does, explicitly has heading information for a variety of topics. Exits, smells, tastes, sounds, door construction material/DC, light in the room, and so on. I get where they are going with this. Light, in particular, is an easy thing to relate to, as something that we generally want to know. But what happens is that these rigorous formats begin to take over. They become the focus rather than the room and the DM running it, being the focus, even though they are supposed to be enabling that. In the end we see that the rigorous adoption and devotion to the format creates a room description that is less useful than the sum of its parts. Whatever effect a dotting hole in the ground, a rotting tree stump, wind whistling through the hole, might have had, it’s lost when you separate them out like this.I strongly believe that there is no one true way to write a description, but I do know that this isn’t it.

Also, when you approach the tree stump, entrance to the druid lair, you are attacked by four halfling thieves, life-long “Protectors of the Druids Lair.” WTF is up with this? Is has absolutely no theming with the rest of the dungeon, in any way. Another party, or bandits camped above, or something would have fit in better and made mode sense.

This is $1 at DriveThru. El Senor Preview is four pages, more than enough to get a sense of the room encounters, for format and interactivity.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/368106/What-Lies-Below?1892600

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

Arrowroot

Posted on September 13, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By N. Masyk
Monkey's Paw Games
OSR
Level ?

“Hail, Agkaman! Hail, the conquering hero! Hail, slayer of accursed serpents! A giant is he; panoply of burnished gold, so heavy that three men together would be buried by the immensity of its weight! A warrior is he; his sword so broad that held aloft it blots out both suns! Hail, the Agkaman, who scoured these lands of the hated snake-kin and took from them their glittering hoard, now the wealth and power of Evech! Hail, the Satrap! Hail the Golden King!”

*Sigh*

This nineteen page digest “adventure” contains a two page dungeon with ten rooms and some fluff for a city and the surrounding hexes. It falls in to the category of “Yet another inspiration product masquerading as an adventure.” There’s not much here more than picking a Dungeon Dozen table or two. Excellent marketing here. Nice cover and a teaser description that draws me in and hooks me for $5. 

So, some city, with four surrounding hexes. One of the hexes gets the description “River; once clear and cool, winding lazily through the lowlands. Now, dammed near to the fortress to provide better irrigation for Agkaman’s crops. Frequently patrolled by riders.” The others are like that. Ok, get inspired and run your game! The city gets the same amount of detail, for this is just a collection of tables with no real meat anywhere. The two page dungeon (one for the map and one for the ten encounters) falls in to the “more of the same” category for descriptions. A symmetrical map (Ug! Fuck that shit!) and then descriptions like “Entry Hall: d6 gold-armoured knights patrol here at all hours.” or “Wine cellar: Den of the elusive wine vampire.” There’s nothing fucking here. The encounters show promise, in the abstract, but without fleshing them out and making them work together it’s just the results of a random computerized encounter table. “Hey, here’s four words about something freaky.” 

I shall, however, use this as an example of of gameable content for about half the table entries Do have some sort of gameable content … if they were present somewhere else and strung together in a meaningful way. Maybe a third of the tables in this are more than just trivia.

Trivia vs gameable content. What is that? I’m sure we’ve all encountered long and detailed descriptions of a vendors physical appearance and their backstory. This is almost always trivia. Having blue or green eyes is unlikely to drive any meaningful interaction in the game. Gameable content, though, will lead to something in the game. It doesn’t have to be something serious, but it will be something that sticks more than green/blue eyes. 

Let’s look at the wanderers table in this, which might more accurately be called the “Hirelings” table. We get a sentence for appearance. Ok. We get a sentence for equipment. Ok. And then we get the zinger, something that solidifies the NPC. “Haunted by the memories of a past life.” or “Hunting a vampire that slew their mentor” or “Blames the gods for every misfortune.” This is the sort of specificity that really can bring a game alive. 

The wandering creature table has hunters tracking a herd for three days, or nomads contemptuous of roof-dwellers. While interesting, they don’t actually LEAD to anything other than a conversation. We’re at a kind of middle-ground. While the NPC details spices them up, the encounter detail needs to drive TOWARDS something. It needs potential energy. Treasure falls in to the same category as the NPC’s. It exists and a purpose in the game (for the hirelinings, stabbing shit) and the extra spice can be more static. “Pristine serpent scale, solid gold & incredibly heavy.” or “Gilded canopic jars, filled to the brim with naphtha.” One merchant in town is an alive merchant … with nothing else, while a Traveller is looking for a fight and doesn’t care with who. You can feel the energy in one and know how to use it, while the other just IS. What’s the point of the olive merchant? Why write it up? It’s not adding anything to the game. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is fifteen pages. It’s enough to get a sense of the mixed-bag of content. Just know that it’s ALL like that. 


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/366779/Arrowroot?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 6 Comments

La Danse Macabre

Posted on September 11, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Michael Gagnon
Self Published
For Coin & Blood
Levels 2-4

Dark things stir under our feet. Creatures born of vile necromancy or dark will. The undead rise from their grave in “La Danse Macabre” an unofficial adventure module for “For Coin & Blood” and other OSR products.

This eleven page adventure, with an interesting cover to lure me in, features a five room dungeon in a graveyard. There are a few interesting concepts involved, but, in the end, it’s just Yet Another Poorly Implemented Concept with The Usual Language & Formatting Issues, to disappear in to the ether.

So, the worlds got some intelligent undead in it, and, they are offered as a player class: The Wretched. Well, more intelligent undead than usual, this is an attempt to give skeletons from Danse Macabre type vibes. It is written as a confusing mess of if this then that, with long conversational style, stretching to a page and half for one of the rooms. Helping this along is a left justified paragraph formatting, ensuring that it will be difficult to understand where one paragraph ends and a new concept begins and contributing to a Wall of Text type feel. No bueno. Mixed in to this is an attempt at an evocative description or two; a muddy graveyard covered in half-buried bones is one of the highlights, described in as many words as I just used. So, conversational style, a lot of if/then and then statements, some attempts at evocative phrases that get lost in the larger formatting issues. Repeated information, such as unlit sconces … that it then tells us that the party can light. This mashup of a description of a place and the actions a party might take in that place … which usually ends up creating a mess in the text, as it does here.

It wants to create this very political environment. You learn about a powerful & rich widow who has hired some mers to clean out her family graveyard of undead so she can bury her dead husband in two days time. It wants you to talk to her, and spends some time describing how the party could sabotage the mercs before they head out to do the same job. In the graveyard crypt you get a little vignette of a skeleton dude in robes giving a sermon, who is interested, perhaps, in getting the parties help for his quest to turn all ife in unlife … allowing the party to ally with him and his minions against he mercs and/or the widow when she shows up in two days time. (Fun fat: if you do this, he gives you a skeleton dude as a retainer! Nice reward that.) SO it wants this tripod with the widow, the mercs, and the skeleton dude. None of which is explored much, but ALL of which is covered with a lot of “if you do this then they will do that” type of statements, along with direct statement to the DM in many places about things the party could do, like “they could blackmail the widow with this information” and so on. But it’s all mixed in, it’s all a mess as presented.

The actual dungeon is not much to speak of. A few undead skeletons. Some lackluster rooms to poke in, not very well described. There’s just not much to do. A few combats with skeletons. Maybe talk to the main skeleton guy, maybe. The IDEA is that this is a dynamic environment, with the tripod, but that doesn’t come across and isn’t well supported for that.

(There may be some English As A Second Language issues in this, but I don’t think they cause any major issues, or minor ones even, other than noticing some phrasing issues.)

This is 5.50 at DriveThru, with no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/368732/La-Danse-Macabre-Adventure-and-Class-module?1892600

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The Light of Hope

Posted on September 8, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Andrew Sammler
Self Published
5e
Level 8

With the continual darkness still overhead, adventurers embark on a journey to deliver Good Mead supplies to some of the Ten-Towns to lighten the mood and allow people to blow off steam. On the journey, the characters will be providing joy, light, hope, celebrations, competition, honey wine, and baked goods.

This 35 page adventure uses about fifteen pages to describe a couple of combats (three?) and a few skill challenges, the rest of the page count being the appendix monster stats. It strikes me as a 4e AL adventure: a pretext and then a [fight or skill challenge.] With logical inconsistencies that tear at suspension of disbelief, I guess it’s fine if all you want to do is roll-play.

Your level eight characters get to escort a wagon full of mead barrels to two towns. Escort mission. Of beer. As level eight’s. It’s not magic beer or anything. It’s just mead. Because the two towns haven’t had any for awhile and it will make them happy. I don’t know man, maybe it’s a thing in this setting that level eights deliver beer. Oh, and the quest giver is an asshole, f you ask questions he starts to get rude and impatient and berate you. I’ve never understood this. “Ok, fuckface, how about you deliver your own beer? Maybe you haul it in your asshole since I’m about to start shoving these barrels up yours!” Yes, I do want to play D&D tonight, why do you ask? Ok, yes, I suck it up “we will deliver your beer Mr ungrateful asswipe. Please, pretty please, allow me to go on this adventure and play D&D tonight.” 

On the way to the first town a blizzard starts. This if course means that you are about to be ambushed. And you are, by undead. Who form ranks with the rear rank shooting arrows at your mead barrels while the front rank protects them. I must say, this pretty much robs the undead of any wonder or mystery, treating them like the robots in the prequels. Nothing really undead about them, they just act like die rollers, which is what everyone in this adventure is. Flavorless die rolling. Oh, and, there’s a dude sneaking up behind you. Afterwards you can track him. Even though there’s a blizzard. I don’t know. Hang on, I’ve got a call from my wife, I have to go home. What? Why, yes, I am divorced for a couple of years now. Oh, I misspoke, I meant to say it’s a spam call and I can keep playing D&D.

When you get to both towns you are given some busy work. “Were gonna have a party tonight, I need your help.” Trovus suggests that first thing in the morning the characters clean up and prepare the warehouse space for the battle of wits tomorrow, which would include dusting, straightening tables, lighting the torches, preparing the dragonchess sets, etc. Slow news day I guess. Then starts the party and our friendly D&D players get to make a series of skill checks. Want to play dragonchess? Make a series of skill checks. Want to do the riddle contest? Make some skill checks. Want to participate in the handstand contest? Make some skill checks. 

The issue is not the festival. This sort of party participation shit has been around forever. The issue us the abstraction of the game. There is NO detail to the contests. Just make some skill checks. No “And Frenkie performs the Rubinate hook moving his platinum dragon to Huma-well 4!” No drama or local colour. No favour of any type. Just make some skill checks. This is the worst sort of things. Roll dice. *YAWN* 

Oh! Oh! I forgot! The dude who sabotages your mead barrels in the ambush? If captured, he won’t give up his employer. Because, I guess, “sabotaging some mead barrels” is the crime of the century even when compared to the fire & toture that the party will bring down on him. Th real reason is, of course, tha the designer wants to have a climactic battle with the bad bad, complete with reveal, at he end of the adventure and finding out sooner would spoil that. 

Did I mention that there’s an assassin in a little hut you visit, trying to kill the person inside, and the MASSIVE FORCE OF UNDEAD waits out back, because, that’s what you do as the big bad; when you have a massive force of undead 10’ away from your victim you instead send one lowly human to do the job. For that matter, the entire adventure revolves around a necromancer wanting to make the town unhappy, and thus sabotaging the mead delivery. A necromancer that seemingly has a bajillion undead at their disposal. Why not just fucking kill people and burn their crops, houses etc? Why fuck around with “sabotage the beer delivery?” 

Because that’s the adventure. A pretext. Written for the wrong level. A pretext. An excuse to roll a bunch of dice in combats that make little sense. A pretext to have some abstracted skill challenges. It reminds me, for all the world, of those terrible 4e RPGA games I used to play up at Winter Fantasy in Fort Wayne.

Sure, it’s formatted nicely enough. But at some point you have to recognize that you’re playing Warhammer and not D&D. What does it even mean anymore to say “I like playing D&D? What does that mean?

It’s 11:11am and it’s time to drink.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages; more than enough to get a sense of the writing style, formatting, and what you are buying.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/368489/DCPoATLOH01-The-Light-of-Hope?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 30 Comments

The Hidden Necropolis

Posted on September 6, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Robert Nemeth
Caulbearer Press
Five Torches Deep/5e
Levels 3-5

Miners at a copper mine in the foothills of a large mountain range have discovered the remains of an ancient civilization and something more mysterious. A lone survivor of the mine arrives at the nearby town, but is delirious from his experience. Will the adventurers sent to unravel the mystery find out what dark fate has befallen the mine?

This forty page digest adventure uses eighteen pages to describe a mine dungeon with thirteen rooms. Long read-aloud and a “encounter room and stab” design mentality combine with an overly focused attention to mechanics to detract from any sort of an interesting environment. 

The mine here is just a couple of room leading up to an underground pit mine about 90’x90’ that, evidently, had about fifty miners working it, given that there seems to be about fifty miner zombies scattered throughout the dungeon. Zombies, and everything else in the adventure, do one thing in this adventure: as soon as you enter the room they shuffle forward to attack you. Or, in the immortal words of the overly-flowery read-aloud “they seek to extract your essence.” And, don’t get your hopes up, there’s nothing special about having your essence extracted. No brain eating or black clouds coming from their mouths or parasitic finger thingies. They just attack with pickaxes. Enter a room, get attacked. Enter another room, get attacked. Maybe make some kind of dex check to climb up something or open something. Or, some kind of int check to find out something meaningless. What was that version of Doom where you basically just entered a room and the doors slammed and creatures appeared? Like a hundred little set pieces. Except these are not set pieces. We all bring a part of of us to what we review and I’m not afraid to say that I find this the most boring type of D&D to D&D. I know, I know, some people like 4e and minis combat. This isn’t that, but it FEELS like that. There’s no real tension in the encounters. No “I wonder what will happen if we open the coffin” or “Oooo, I know this is a bad idea but I’m going to do it anyway!” It feels mechanistic.

And this feeling is probably enhanced by the focus on mechanics in the adventure. The DM text really likes describing mechanics. In detail. And I’m not talking trap & door porn, where the mechanics of the trap are given too much detail. No, this game mechanics detail. Like let’s write a long paragraph on how to walk down the corridor and all the checks one has to make and then the checks after the checks. And then the checks are the parts of the DM text that are highlighted, to call out the 5e specific rules for that system. This draws your eye to them, even if you’re not playing 5e, making it harder to grok the mechanics and other text as a whole. 

And let’s talk read-aloud. The read-aloud that makes just about every read-aloud mistake that can be made. It’s long, violating the 3-4 sentence guideline. People don’t listen to long read-aloud. Their attention wanders. They pull out their phones. They don’t care anymore. It’s in italics. Long sections of italics are harder to read and comprehend. And, it’s in a weird fucking italics font, making it all the harder to deal with. It uses phrases like “appears to be” and concentrates on a second-person perspective, saying things like “You can see some tracks off to the left” instead of “There are tracks off to the left.” When read-aloud is a quarter of a page or longer, there’s an issue. It’s focusing too much on exact specifics, where the doors are, for example, instead of giving the impression of the room for the party to follow up on with questions to the DM. 

Oh, let’s see, what else. The local garrison is too busy with road patrols to go check out the Serpent Men reports. The serpent man portions of the dungeon are rather drab, meant to be enhanced by a “general dungeon features” section earlier in the book, which will no doubt be forgotten and dropped during play. Doors have not been used in quite some time and thus are harder to open, in spite of the zombification event just happening. Zombies at the entrance don’t show up to ambush the party unless the party miss their perception check. I have no idea how that works. 

The titular necropolis is one room, has two animated stone statues, and a gold scepter. Talk about a let down …

The wandering monster tables are by far the most interesting part of the adventure. A pair of ogres with a halfling in a sack over their back, harpies who want just one person to bring back to the nest to feed on, a face-saving bandit with an ostentatious name, Stirge who attack pc’s with BO, a troll who lures PC’s with the sounds of a drowning child. That shit is good. 

Production values on this one are high. But, in terms of design, it gets almost everything wrong … unless you just want to fight shit and exploration, role-play, wonder and joy are just a sideline to you.

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages, only the first of which shows you one encounter, the first one. It’s a decent example of what to expect, just assume that everything else is more badder than this.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/322266/The-Hidden-Necropolis?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 8 Comments

The Witch of Underwillow

Posted on September 4, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Merric Blackman
Self Published
5e
Levels 1-3

Save a kidnapped child! The villagers fear the forest, and rightly so. When wolves drag a child into the forest, there is only one option: find brave adventurers to follow the wolves and save the child! However, are there things the villagers aren’t telling the adventurers? What dark fate awaits them when they face the Witch of Underwillow?

This eight page adventure features six encounters on the trail of a baby stolen by a witch, with a nominal Ravenloft setting. Decent creepy and writing, along with DM text that that is to the point, helps make this a solid adventure, although featuring a few odious concepts and “extensions” that are, at best, half-hearted. A straightforward one session stab and grab. Merric has a solid head but can stumble on delivery, and this is no exception.

First, competent adventure. The read-aloud, while trending to the longer side of the three-four sentence rule, is fairly evocative and concentrates on the important shit. Hearing that a baby went missing while mom was hanging laundry, the RA for the house covers a fallen-down house in three sentences, and then the backyard with laundry line and overturned baby basket in two, finishing with “A dark forest runs along the edge of the yard.” You get the three main things: the house, the laundry/basket/yard, and the forest. Plus, the imagery of the laundry line, overturned basket and dark forest beyond summons up on not images on dingo got my baby, by The Witch movie as well. This sort of eerie farmhouse/woods thing that only a melancholy Sunday afternoon mood at dusk can match. And Merric does this sort of thing time after time in the adventure. The red-aloud is decent and focuses on what it needs to. The images painted tend toward the eerie, and the supporting DM text is generally to the point, focusing on the important aspects of the adventure, abstracting where necessary. The interior of the house gets two sentences, with a third on the “twist”, in a separate paragraph. And, the major topics are generally kept in separate paragraphs, to help locate information better. I would prefer a bolded word or two to help focus attention to the correct paragraph further, but, whatever. 

I should also cover the use of themes and cultural heritage. Good adventures can leverage that shared culture we all have to bring more to the adventure than the words otherwise could. That laundry line, basket, and woods, for example, leveraging all the media we’ve seen of those situations. The mother is actually “simple” and a bit insane … because the baby is a doll … bringing in the horror aspect to the game (this being a Ravenloft adventure.)The witch lives in the required tree root ceiling house, right out of 13th Warrior, and her door has a golden keyhole … which should be immediately bringing up folklore vibes. Not to mention a witch stealing babies and wolves in the forest. The use of this in the adventure leverages MORE, and that’s a GREAT thing.

And then he goes and mucks it up by relying on the worst tropes of adventures.

You see, the witch has  “decided to lure the adventurers to her lair, weaken them with some tests, and finally kill them herself (if the tests don’t do it first).” This is lame. Luring adventurers and testing them. A thousand thousand bad adventures have this premise. It’s the “I couldn’t think of anything more interesting” premise. Merric goes on to say that “In my campaign, her motivations were never revealed, as the characters killed her before she could even negotiate with them – the perils of trigger-happy players.” Yeah, play stupid games and win stupid prizes. I would re-frame “trigger-happy” as “smart.” But, whatever. The fruit of the poison tree is that the innkeep is instructed by the witch to hire to the party. This, alone, is no great sin. After all, up till now we could just ignore all this “test” and “hire” bullshit and just run a nice “evil baby stealing witch” adventure. But then we face an issue, and, I’m sure, the reason for the nonsense: I presume everyone knows that the womans baby is not a baby. Thus, including one feature, a desire to have a doll of a crazy-woman stolen instead of a real baby, leads to the sins piling up. Now, to be fair, you do get a few words of advice on the players detecting the deception and the innkeep breaknig down, fearful for his family, and ratting on the witch. But …

The trend continues. The door with the golden lock can’t be Knock’d. Yes, I fucking know that Knock fucks things up. Yes, I know that the witch wants the party to complete her “tests” first and knock bypasses that. Themes the breaks. You want to play D&D then you don’t get to gimp the fucking players. Don’t want Knock to fuck things up? Play a game not meant for dungeon-delving and one more suited for horror. I’m not morally opposed to The Oracle living on top of a mountain, or requiring the golden fleece before helping, but too much of it breaks the immersive nature and brings on the eye rolling. 

On top of that, the “combat” encounters feel like tack ons. On the way through the first you get to fight wolves. Ok. Sure, they live in the forest and you DO get a nice “glowing red eyes in the shadows” bit. But then, on the way out after fucking her up, you also get another wolf, a dire wolf blocking your path. The pretext is that its either her boon pact entity taking revenge on the party or a rival of hers throwing some shit at the party. In reality it’s a “I feel like I need another encounter” encounter. It feels like a tack on and doesn’t fit in. Yes, it IS the third wolf encounter in the adventure and three is a magic number, but it also feels like Merric got lazy with it. 

So, a workmanlike effort by Merric. Decent concept, but could have used a little more thinking in a couple of the concepts behind it and a few of the encounters. And the options for “She Is a Good Witch”, etc, in the appendix, don’t really expand those options in any meaningful or interesting way. It’s an ok adventure, decently evocative, better than most, but a little … uninteresting?

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/191665/The-Witch-of-Underwillow?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | 5 Comments

The Fight Job

Posted on September 1, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By imnotsupposedtogetjigsinit
Self Published
B/X
Level ?

A minor crime boss has recruited the PCs to sabotage the championship fight. She has thousand of gold pieces on the long-shot challenger and promises a hefty payday to the gang if they can succeed. The PCs know where the champion will be but he’s wily. And dangerous. Time is short. Can the PCs keep their cool when the chips are down?

This fourteen page new-school adventure is about the parties attempt to sabotage a pit fighter before his next big fight. Hand reference material and a sandboxy attitude go a long way in to making this a more open form adventure, but it also feels … empty? It could be just me (I was in a bad bike accident yesterday) but it feels a little too … open. Or, maybe, it feels al little too easy, and relies too much on the DM to come up with challenges for the party.

So, new school adventure, meaning digest, two column, clean formatting, and a little more attention paid to headers and layout. You might think of an art punk layout aesthetic, but not pushed as far as those usually are … making this more usable. Major topics generally get a page devoted to them (sometimes two) which makes finding the NPC reference, or the locations, fairly easy. NPC’s on a page, map on a page, Street Urchins on a page, schedule on a page.

And there is a schedule. You’re hired to nerf a pit fighter, to put the fix in for a gambler. They are paying you 10,000 gp(!) The gambler got their hands on the fighters schedule, so you’re supposed to disrupt them, not actually kill them, since that would call off the fight. You get a handy dandy timer support, a pie chart with 4 15-minute pieces per hour, with travelling between locations taking 30 minutes and most major actions taking 15 minutes. It’s a good thing to support the DM with, both in the form of the guideline and in the reference material provided to help track the time. There’s some little table that tracks the parties success and gives the pit fighter a chance of success based on how much the party disrupts him. He’s going five places and nerfing him four times will give him a 0-in6 chance of winning, with the odds going up by 1 each time he gets a buff in. It’s a cute mini-game, although, the party has no chance of knowing how well they are doing. This is No Bueno. I mean, there’s some appeal in the party not knowing how much they need to do to nerf the guy to be successful, but for the players, they need some idea of if they should push their luck. Do we do X, which seems risky, or not? How does this decision dynamic change if you know the odds are 1 in 6? Or if the odds are 5 in 6? Or if you don’t know the odds at all? Generally, these sorts of things go better, in terms of a fun game full of tension, if the party can make a meaningful decision … and not knowing doesn’t really help that much at all.

The adventure is advertised as for most old-school games, and, is fairly generically stated in terms of a B/X mindset. But the game world does diverge from what I might call the usual B/X assumptions. This is more a 5e land. A druid sits in the gym ready to perform rituals for the fighter. The guard sergeants have Bolas Of Command, and the fighters trainer has a wand of magic missiles and the fighter himself wearing an anti-magic belt. You’re in magical ren-faire land. Nothing wrong with that … if that’s what you expect. I suspect that orienting this towards smaller niche systems, such as Troika or Mork Borg, or the 5e/Pathfinder crowd, would do a better job setting expectations.

But, let’s get to the heart of it … and I don’t mean the marker stalls selling tenfootpole’s as the cheapest thing. 🙂 The thing is a sandboxy thing. For better and worse.

You’ve got the lineline, and tools to track it. You’ve got some NPC reference. You’ve got a brief description of his entourage. You’ve got the town layout, and one to two page descriptions of the locations. You’ve got your mission, now go! Hell, the designer even gives you a little writeup on the marketplace, town guard, and street urchins, supporting the DM in their play. This is all great, and is exactly what the designer should be doing. And the locations generally support the play at that site. For example, the pit fighter goes to the swamp to meditate before the fight. And one of the (four) location is “The Screaming Crans eggs”; eggs/nest of a crane whose eggs  “Scream” when hatching, or are just cracked. Or the smithy, where dude has his silvered arms and hands recounted, with the moulds and silver polish present. One could imagine itching powder of some sort making it in to the mix, yes? This is good.

But … The Worthy Adversary, whatever that should turn out to be, is not covered very well. We get the set up, the location, why the dude is going there and some hints about what the party could do … but not really any challenges to get in the way.  The smithy wallows in his home, absorbed in his whiskey and pancakes, when not working. That’s all we get as any sort of a challenge. Is he working? Customers or apprentices? Does ANYTHING represent a challenge or an obstacle to the parties monkey wrenches? The gym where he works out doesn’t let you in unless you are member … and provisionel/new members must be sponsored. That’s all we get. Clearly this is leading somewhere. You can see where it wants to go. But there’s nothing in the individual encounter locations to support the play at that location, beyond a single single set up for a situation. 

Now, clearly, people are going to have different opinions on things like this. Some will be ok with this open framework of an adventure and some will want just a little more support for the DMin these situations that the adventure goes out outfits way to set up. I fall in to the second camp. It needs just a little more. I understand the desire t fit a locale in to one or two pages. The ideological purity of that design decision. But it can’t come at the detriment to supporting play. Another page each would have done the trick, I think.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. The preview shows you the entire adventure.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/366643/The-Fight-Job?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | 16 Comments

Temple of 1000 Swords

Posted on August 30, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Brad Kerr
Swordlords Publishing
OSE
Level 3

An ancient temple to the forgotten god of swords lies hidden behind a waterfall. Great piles of swords choke its halls and spill out into nearby streams and waterways. What strangeness still treads and what swords will you draw in the Temple of 1000 Swords?

This 25 page adventure describes a slightly absurdist eighteen room dungeon with … a sword theme. I mean, SERIOUSLY sword-themed. Interesting encounters and good formatting compliment a utilitarian writing style 

Oh, and it has carnivorous duck-people in it. I did mention slightly absurdist, right? And the giant duck-person egg? And rooms FILLED with rusting swords, streams clogged with them, a gelatinous cube choked full of them. I mean, this thing takes swords to 11, even providing a d100 table of interesting swords you can find and some guidelines on how to keep things interesting should the party decide to “mine” the dungeon for swords. 

Complimenting this is a slightly devil-may-care attitude of the NPC’s in places. The jovial god of swords, a mermaid queen ready for marrying, and not particularly attached to the magic sword she’s carrying. Oh, didn’t I mention the merfolk? Blood enemies of the duck people? And their genocidal war between each other that takes place in the halls? Like I said, slightly absurdist … but never really going over the edge, IMO, and everything following logically (well, D&D logic …) from the initial setup. And I do love me some slightly absurdit D&D.

And there’s always the allure of the sword. Of the MAGIC sword. Nothing like “you see a faintly glowing sword” to get the parties attention and push them in to the encounter they just KNOW is going to be a problem. Why fuck with that giant tower of swords in danger of collapsing, with weirdo sand people forming and dissolving underneath it? Because there’s a glowing sword up in it. Mermaid chick got a glowing sword? Let’s see what she has to say … Sounds like my kind of guy! This is an excellent example of luring the PLAYERS in. There’s always some kind of power fantasy behind every player … even if I have to extend that to “fulfilling my bullshit character arc that no one cares about except me.” And, appeals to THAT are going to be the most successful appeals you can make as a DM/designer. Motivating the PLAYERS to Push The Big Red Button turns the encounter, or adventure, in a gleeful exploration of the roleplaying world, instead of the It’s What My Character Would Do drudgery.

There’s a stream of water that you have to travel up … choked by swords! Also, there’s a pit under it, full of pointy swords. Also, All the swords make the pit malfunction 3-in-6. You gotta admire the dedication to the sword theme here. Oh, look, a dude stuck to thew all, through the heart, with a glowing sword. And still alive. Of course he’s a vampire. Of COURSE he promises not to kill you if you release him. And, in a surprise twist, he doesn’t! Of course, he WILL cause future problems throughout the land, that the party will just KNOW they started. I fucking love it! That’s how you do an encounter! This is an excellent example, as well, of making the characters actions have consequences and further enhancing the game world by it. It’s not exactly a punishment, or a reward … or, maybe, it’s both at the same time. Good adventures that kind of follow on possibilities and this one delivers. 

The writing here is more utilitarian than I would prefer to see, both in the overview text and in the DM text. “Vaulted ceilings, doric pillars, the echoing sounds of water. A massive statue of an armored god looms from the northern wall. A sword- choked stream flows from the east. A dark hallway leads west.” Certainly, this isn’t minimally keyed, and it’s not boring writing either. But, if I had a complaint with this adventure, it’s that those descriptions could use a little more polish to bring them to life more in the DM’s head. Not so much more words but polishing up what’s there. Or, the DMs text which reads “A pile of fine swords is placed before the statue as an offering. Two of them glow faintly in the dark (blades 2 and 9 of the nine). An enormous gem (1000 GP) is embedded in the statue’s forehead; it’s a treacherous climb to reach it (Strength check).” Again, certainly not overwritten, and only slightly underwritten, I’d suggest. Not enough to impact the play of the adventure, but, more effort in this area would really turning this thing from a fine journeyman adventure in a masterful shooting star of one. 

I could go on and on about this thing. An excellent curse/geas provided by the God Of Swords (who can do a wish for you …), the fetal duckling horror that emerges from the giant duck egg. (Of course that’s what happens! OF COURSE! And that’s the sign of a good encounter, when everyone says “OF COURSE!”) VTT maps provided, a very god intro summary of what’s going on. This thing is is ready to go.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is seventeen pages, showing more than a few of the encounters. This is a good preview, showing the intro, as well as the encounters. I’d check out the first page of encounters to get an idea if you’d like this. 


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/360211/Temple-of-1000-Swords?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 3, Reviews, The Best | 4 Comments

Off The Books

Posted on August 28, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Dana Floberg
Self Published
5e
Level 5

A magical mishap occurs when a handful of freshmen enchantment students cast a modified version of the awaken spell on a fantasy epic in the university library, and now characters are leaping off the page – literally! As heroes, villains, and damsels come to life, the librarians need someone to restore narrative order to the unruly tales. But as the lines between fiction and reality blur, some of the characters begin to suspect their stories are cages they’d rather not return to at all.

This 19 page adventure details a few encounters in a library with fiction characters from books. It has a certain funhouse design aesthetic. The core encounters have interesting fundamentals, but lack in their implementation, both mechanically and in terms of presentation.

Our exploration of The Storyteller Collective Workshop continues, I assume, since this adventure thanks those folks. As with previous entries, there are some decent foundational ideas marred by a lack of experience. But, again with this one, that’s what being a first time writer is all about. 

We are once again in the default 5e setting of magical RenFairre, with this time the issue being in a large library. It seems that characters are coming out of storybooks and appearing in the real world. Someone has to get in there and, literally, close the books. I think I remember a Dungeon adventure like this? And, certainly, a room or two in old FunHouse dungeons. This, also, has a bit of the funhouse vibe to it, with contrived situations from fiction being the reason for the season. If you’re gonna have a RenFairre world then you’re going to have libraries, and they are going to have issues. Not my thing, but certainly A LOT of other peoples thing. Our hooks are short: maybe you’re here to research something and need to solve the situation efore you can, or, a buddy caused the problem and begs you to help out so they won’t get expelled. The first is the standard “I placed the McGuffin here” that can be relied upon in any adventure while the second at least has a sheepish student begging for help, both better than being hired. 

Chick from a romance novel gets out and starts reading her own book, bringing the villain and hero in to the world … and some self-awareness on her part. You go from room to room (about seven in total) encountering some situation, resolve it, and move on, until you close the last book in the last room and deal with the fallout of nulling out, or not, someones existence by closing the book on them.  Along the way you pick up a side-kick or two and deal with the asshole good guy from the novel.

The strength here is in the room encounters and the hints of personality that come with them. A troll asking a riddle, a wishing well that knows the absolute truth about the universe that you can use as a lie detector, a toad needing to be kissed that can gets larger each time … and can be used to solve a puzzle, or a band of merry pirates and their White Whale they hunt. Good concepts, solid and recognizable and good pretty for the cultural memories that can bring more to an encounter from the players and DMs own backgrounds. And a little extra here and there, n the way of words, a sly recognition or the tropes. Our pirates “Like many fictional pirates, they don’t actually do a lot of murder or pillaging, but they are extremely cool.” So, conceptually some good ideas with some hints of personality that’s unusual in a 5e adventure. Someone’s soul hasn’t yet died from writing. 

Fear not, gentle designer, the ennui will come. Until then, let me help you with the self-doubt …

The biggest issue here is one of parties ability to impact the adventure. Yes, the old Quantum Ogre and his pal the {fuck, I’ve been driking and can’t remember the name. The party has the ability to make meaningful decisions and their actions are not irrelevant. What the fuck is that called again?] So, major issue.

We need to deal with the doors unlocking when you defeat a monster. This means one thing: YOU WILL FACE MY ENCOUNTER THE WAY I ENVISIONED AND FUCK YOU FOR TRYING TO AVOID IT. Perhaps a little overly harse, especially for a new designer, but the ability for the party to use their own wit and abilities to avoid/overcome something is a key point in roleplaying. This shows up in myriad different ways in the adventure, including monsters that spor you as soon as you enter the room, Ye Olde Door Unlocyky, a disguised baddie who has no sign of ill intent on you Detect Deceit roll, and, worst of all … the goody goody guy who has been brought back to life if you kill him too soon by Sir Not Appearing In This Movie. I know, I know, you want to set up a cool moment. You want him showing up in the final battle. But you don’t get to write cool moments, as a designer. Oh, you get to POTENTIALLY set them up. But this isn’t the designers story and it’s not the DMs story. It’s the fucking players story. We do not take away their [fuck! Whats the word?]  As a designer I appreciate some tips on what to do if that happens (WHEN, if I’m playing) but you can’t rob the players. 

There are a host of other issues also. The NPC’s descriptions oculd be better, and come off as a wall of text. They need some trimming and more bolding/underlining, etc, to make it easy to scan their personality traits during play. Likewise, I get that they should be turned up to 11 (as advised by the adventure) but that doesn’t really come through. A few hints in that area could be appreciated. Supporting the DM in their efforts. Wall of text, in fact, comes up several places, most notably in three “interlude” rooms, one of which the party will experience, that come come off as three giants hunks of text that is hard to sort through. I could bitch about the other two unused rooms as well .. might as well quantum that n a plot based adventure like this, otherwise its wasted content. If I COULD explore it, and don’t, then its not wanted. If Im explicitly forbidden to explore ? of it then its wasted. And then there’s the “place what you want’ treasure list. Sure, you get to select from the appendix, but, that’s a cop out. Decide it and put it in. That lets you have puzzles that leverage those items later.

And then there’s a couple of things that just DO. NOT. WORK. There’s a polymorphed cat in the beginning that gets too many words and feels like a pet NPC from a DM campaign, the extra adding nothing to the adventure and the DM being explicitly told “but all this backstory is irrelevant since the party wont be able to grok it out.” Outhgt oh! No good that! Mildly related is the “take a bunch of damage each round while trying to solve a riddle” room. But you get to save for half! Again, this feels contrived, and not in a fun-house manner. No matter what you do you take damage. And no, “the trolls gets to decide who is attacked by the flying books” is not a solution to that issue.

Exposition Dump Wolf is out of plac3 and whatever the designer was going for just doesn’t come through with it. (And, I should not, nor tdo the hero, villain, or self-aware woman. I get where you want to go with this but it just doesn’t come through at all. You need to support the DM more in this.) 

And then there’s the final mechanic: getting pulled in to the books. Not only can characters come out but the party can get sucked IN to a book. But, as implemented, this is weak sauce. It feel like the parties actions have no consequences. It’s just a save DC that gets harder and harder, and doesn’t really have consequence since they can be sucked out again and there’s not really anything in the adventure to support whats IN the books they sucked in to. 

And, peaking of supporting the DM, the final battle has some storybook characters showing up … “Whatever the DM likes.” NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You, the designer, get to decide that. You get to pull in some appropriate things and make them relevant and support the DM in their usage. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but thats the value add that you are adding as the designer.

So, some decent ideas in the puzzles and set up, but not really supported well either for the DM or in the formatting of the text. But, it also doesn’t want me to drink until I’m blackout drunk. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/366213/Off-the-Books?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 11 Comments

The Orb of Goodbyes

Posted on August 25, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Marcos Lopez
Self-published
5e
Level 4

The Orb of Goodbyes is a magical item blessed with the power to extract and erase memories from a willing creature’s mind. When a Waterdeep lieutenant retires from military service, she seeks the Orb to forget a dangerous memory. Those who help procure the Orb from an enchanted cave discover the secrets behind this magical artifact and unearth its hidden memories.  The adventurers may then decide whether to deliver the Orb and help the veteran find peace, or use the item themselves to release burdens from their past.

This twelve page adventure has a small cave dungeon with seven rooms and three encounters, using four pages to do so. It’s neither as pretentious or as padded as the blurb or page count would indicate, and does a good job with specifics … when it goes there …

I’ve gotten a series of requests for 5e reviews lately. I don’t mind, and, in fact, am pleased that the 5e crowd is paying more attention to adventure design. But, also, I may have discovered why. This adventure is the designers first that they’ve ever written. Yeah! And, it comes from the Storyteller Collectives ‘Write Your First Adventure’ Workshop series. Ok, so, first, I throw up in my mouth a little every time I hear the word Storyteller, but, it probably comes the cynicism embedded in GenX. Who am I to shit on the younger generations Shining City On A Hill? Anyway, Marcos, congrats on your first adventure. Now, let’s rip it to shreds.

The adventure is not as pretentious as it might seems. “Unearth a haunting memory and discover the power to forget …)” says the marketing blurb on the cover. That really is the worst of it, by far. Reading that primes me to hate something, with memories of every edgelord adventure ever flooding back to me. But, it’s not that bad and it treads lightly on those issues … just barely enough to evoke a hint of it but not wallowing in it Well, ok, no I lied, it does get pretty close to the eye-rolling line with “two soldiers who have a memory from their past that they want to forget.” Again, hints of the edgelord, right? And it’s certainly true that my midwestern D&D values tell me that if you feel compelled to put a trigger warning on something then you probably shouldn’t be using that idea. Except … in this case the retired soldiers want to forget where they buried an evil amulet to no one can scry them and learn its location. It’s not actual trauma as much as its something more mundane. But that’s not what you thought, was it? Two soldiers, forgetting a memory? Yeah, we all know what the fuck that implies. And thus, a trigger warning … and some (brief) suggestions in the appendix on how to massage things to change the soldiers to something else. The inclusion of the soldiers brings to the forefront what that IMPLIES, but the adventure never goes there … leaving the vibe but thats it. It’s an interesting design decision (assuming it was one.) 

The cave involves three memories from people who have used the orb … and one of them is a sad one.  Young gnome sits on the edge of a forest stream crying, waiting for er friend to join her … who never did. Holy fuckballs, sad! The gnome needs the parties help deciding what to do, continue her journey alone, go home, or something else. Is a lost child a bad adventure design choice? No, it’s a trope. But here the similar scene is being framed and presented in the context of a memory someone wanted to forget … with all the baggage it implies. This should cement the power of framing a scene in every readers mind … it’s a very powerful technique. 

Now, I’m not suggesting that watching Precious is a fun time, but, I think we can allow just a little real feels in our game. I’m sure this is an interesting moment when groups encounter it … and its probably on the edge of the line, about to cross over to indie game nonsense, But, not over it, and bringing more to the table than the usual low-effort fantasy trope crap.

The designer also has a talent for an imagined scene OUTSIDE of the generic trope. There’s a tendency to just say “The village is having a celebration!” and leave it at that. Abstracted. Terrible design and writing. But here the designer does a little father. The town square is a dirt lot. The locals are having a community potluck, wooden tables and rough benches, a dancefloor, a handful of ok music performers. That FEELS like a real community event, doesn’t it? A little shitty, a pitch in, people just doing their best. And the stables, overflowing with horses and empty farmers wagons parked outside every which way. Or locals confusing the Orb of Goodbyes with the Goblet of Goobyes, a local everclear shot from the tavern. A rock wall with graffiti with people signing their name outside of the cave … a local custom. This shit makes sense.  It FEELS natural, as if it were imagined first and THEN someone stuck the fantasy on it. It even makes an attempt at supporting the DM in some interesting ways (beyond the trigger rethemes) If the party tries to get the old soldiers to come with them it has some advice for the DM on how to counter it … but also doesn’t explicitly forbid it and supports the DM a bit if THEY do get the soldiers help. That’s what supporting the fucking DM is all about. Or, some advice on how to handle a party that is overly suspicious of the mayor. A common theme in a village, and helps to handle players like me who stab the most obvious NPC first and lets Pelor sort out the damage. 

But were also facing a new designer here, and it shows.

There are lazy contrivances used in multiple ways. You can’t exit a room in the cave until you “finish” the memory, being blocked by an invisible barrier. Invisible barriers are lazy and nearly as bad as “the doors slam shut and lock when you enter the room.” Similarly, once you complete the cave the entire places swells up with water and forces everyone in the cave out from the torrential flood. Uh huh. To be fair, it’s handled fairly well, but the whole “closing time” thing is something I’m over. 

We’ve got three “memory” scenes in the cave, all of which must be completed. There’s the one I mentioned, the sad gnome one. Then there’s the “where we buried the amulet” plot hook one. (Which, gives the location of the amulet to the party … a floor up idea for DMs who want to use it) That leaves one more … a simple Yeti attack. When you’ve only got three encounters you need them to stick and while two do this third one does NOT, being a simple combat. I’m not necessarily asking for more edgelord stuff, but something more than a simple combat. 

There’s also LONG NPC descriptions, the in standard 5e format that make them impossible to scan quickly and water down the personalities of the people involved. And then … the read-aloud. 

The read-aloud is bad. It summarizes. It abstracts. “But, amid the festivities for the arrival of Brigita – it becomes obvious a mild disagreement is escalating between her and the retiring Townmaster, Anton Astorio. Both Brigita and Anton make an effort to smile and continue with the occasion, but perceptive people notice the friction growing.” This isn’t what you want to be doing. This is TELLING us what is going on. You want to SHOW it. You want to show a disagreement. You want to show the escalation. In this case, rather than read-aloud, perhaps through vignettes for the DM to drop in … which could be spaced in with some local color events form the yokals, to help the DM bring THAT part of the adventure to life more. “Once inside of the cave” says the read-aloud. Nope. You almost NEVER want to imply action in a read-aloud, at least not on the parties part. You want descriptions, not conversational writing. Ad meaningless skill checks to find the cave in the first placE? We won’t even talk about the useless rolling stuff, or the repetition in the background information which, while brief, still annoys the fuck out of me.

This is $2 at DriveThru. I’m willing to throw up in my mouth less when I hear the word Storyteller if their workshop continues to churn out new designers like this. Certainly not great, but showing some potential that is more than the usual DriveThru/DMSGuild drivel.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/366939/The-Orb-of-Goodbyes?1892600

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