Medusa and the Cursed Forest

Posted on July 14, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Addison Short
Torchlight Press
5e
Levels 10-11

Once a faithful young acolyte to a goddess of war, Acantha tended to her god’s temple diligently and without protest. One fateful evening a rival god appeared and wrought destruction on the temple. Rather than take pity on Acantha, her goddess cursed her with the powers she is now feared for: her petrifying gaze and the mass of writhing snakes that protrude from her head. Little known, however, is that the curse also bound her life to the broken temple; if she strays from it for too long, she grows weak and begins to die.In the millenia since she was cursed, her presence has imbued the surrounding forest with its own petrifying magic. Creatures that enter the depths of the forest risk being turned to stone by the latent magic and for each creature petrified, the forest grows further outward. Now, Acantha is known as the Lady of Sorrows.

This 34 page adventure details a petrified forest and with a ten room temple at the center containing an ancient medusa. It has some good ideas for putting the medusa in to the context of the larger game world, but really doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up, never going fully down any path. The results are a muddled mess that takes a great concept and comes off as generic.

This thing has four different elements to it, and doesn’t fully go down the path of any one of them, or, perhaps, use any one of them effectively, much less using all four effectively. You’ve got “the medusa in the larger context of the region”, “the medusa’s petrified forest”, “the temple of the medusa at the center of the forest” and “the medusa’s allies.” Each of these, individually, has some interesting ideas (well, except maybe the temple) but they are just surface level concepts, not going far enough and not working together.

What sucked me in to this product in the first place is the medusa in the larger context. Let’s think of this as THE medusa, and, in fact, this medusa’s origin is much like the mythical one, cursed by a god. The forest is a mythical place. This isn’t just a medusa that shows up as a random encounter, one of many, inside of a cave complex. This is HER place in the world. The people know about her. They know about the forest. It’s a thing for people. And, there;s notes on her actions in the wider world. Outlying farms getting visits from her, a kind of protection thing, which is either a racket or beneficial, depending on how youplay the medusa. Her showing up at some nobles party, all Sleeping Beauty style, to fuck with people. Longer plans, like her minions raiding a village to forcibly disasm the village. But it doesn’t do anything with any of this. It’s not a coherent narrative. Rather than picking one , or two, and going with it, instead it’s just a couple of sentences thrown at the DM. “Do what you want with this concept.” This is a SEVERELY missed opportunity. A mythical creature in a mythical place with plots? That would be GOLD, but it’s not handled well here at all, and given no life or room to grow. 

The forest. Petrified. Full of statues, etc. Slowly expanding as more and more animals and people get petrified. It’s cut off a village awhile ago and now they are isolated from the rest of the kingdom. All super good. Nice concept. Terribly handled. The forest has two things going on. First, if you kick up a dust cloud you get to save to turn to stone in a few days. Also, dust storms randomly swirl around at times, especially during encounters. There’s no way mentioned to cure the “flesh to stone” infection. During a dust squall it’s noted that a cloth over the face keeps you from having to make a save … but not during general travel? There’s an entire page devoted to the dust storms, inhaling the dist, etc, and these sorts of very basic are never mentioned. Further, it feels punitive to me. Much like heat and cold rules, it feels like torture to play in it. And, when you get to the temple, your “make a saving throw every day or the disease progresses” changes to “make a saving throw every turn.” Fuck me man. And then the encounters are … strange? Each takes about a column, for a VERY basic encounter in most cases. There are two tables, one of which I don’t think is ever used and has ten entries on it and “roll a d4” noted. Fuck if I know what this table is for. The other is athe “traveling through the forest” table with the encounters getting a column each. There are no set encounter locations in the forest, just wander the fuck around in it having these random encounters and making saving throws to not die untli you reach the somewhat random hex with the medusa’s temple in it. (Admitidadly, in the center of the zone, but the players don’t know that and don’t know how big the place is so they won’t know which hex is the center.) This is all pretty fucking terrible design. Again, nice concept, but “wander the death zone having random encounters” is not an adventure. What this needed was some fixed locations, with the NPC’s scattered about.

And NPC’s there are. A treant with no home forest to guard anymore because it was logged out. A hag with a bunch of orphan children. The invisible snake that likes silver tableware. Not bad. Maybe we can ever count a tribe of trolls that serve the medusa. But, as NPC’s, they are all just stuffed in to the ten room temple. Any subplots or interesting encounters will have to happen there, perhaps in the context of a fight. They have no room to breathe and nothing interesting going on within the context of the adventure (more on their role in the larger context later.) 

And the medusa’s tempe is boring as all fuck. The descriptions are essentially non-existent. Which, I guess, makes sense in a way, maybe? I mean, It’s not an exploratory location. You either talk to her or stab her. But I just can’t get over the lack of any meaningful detail. “An alter devoted to the god of war cracked down the middle.” Well, fuck, that’s certainly a great description for the fucking thing that started the entire ordeqal of medusa in the first place, isn’t it? And the cleaning closet is one of the ten rooms. What the fuck? Seriously? Along with the outhouse. With a bucket to put the excrement in to fertilize the garden. This is what you devote pages to in a ancient cursed medusa’s temple? And the creatures/allies just sit in their locations if you start stabbing her, I guess, since there’s no notes on this outcome. 

And now we must deal with the elephant. There is an attempt to make the various major NPC’s more well rounded. A ham-handed attempt that amounts to “DRAGON GOOD. PRINCESS BAD. HUR HUR HUR.” Let’s be clear, I really like a complex social environment, including the “monsters.” I think it offers much more rewarding play than just having everyone and everything attack outright when they see the party. But I’ve got my limits. The medusa has grown increasingly impatient with the greed and cruelty of the humanoid kingdoms over the millenia.” Uh huh. Says the chick you turns people to stone. Cue the South Park “It was coming right at me!” schtick. The treant advisor/friend whos forest was cut down by the human kingdom. The NE hag who doesn’t eat children and instead rescues orphans from the forest to raise them. Uh huh. Or hooks that involve rescuing the women children and elderty from a village that are in danger. Uh huh. There’s a passing attempt to create “were allied with the medusa” the medusa relationship to us is neutral” and “stabbing the medusa” hooks, but, in reality, this is just stabbing the medusa. Otherwise there’s not really an adventure here, it’s just a patron. Ph, oh! The stabbing the medusa hook? You’re hired by the Lord to go do it. And if you do he fucks you over by giving the worst hex in the petrified forest as your domain. This sort of ham-handed shit doesn’t fly. It doesn’t when the monsters are all psychos and it doesn’t when we turn the tables and make them the good guys and the humans all evil. And it oesn’t matter how many encounters there are like “flocks of birds turn to stone midair and rain down” there are. The inability to give the major NPC’s more than a single dimension, either direction, destroys the ability to create a lager game context for the party to enjoy and/or exploit. 

Discounting this ham-handedness though, the other parts of the adventure are extremely weak both as stand-along elements and in the way that they should be working together to create a larger context for adventuring. The surrounding area stuff is a throw-away. The wilderness has no depth. The NPC’s have no room to experience them. And the temple is a disaster of “Nothing going on but boring.”  But, in concept, each one of those is great! Yes, even the ham-handed shit. This are great ideas … that jts did NOT make it in to execution in any way shape or form beyond “I have a good idea …”

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is the entire thing which is GREAT. I would suggest taking a look at the forest few tables. They will general the general vibe of the product, as well as the missed potential.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/356517/Medusa-and-the-Cursed-Forest?1892600

This has been episode “A pernod at 7:30am sounds like a good idea to me” of Bryce reviews everything on his wishlist.

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

Griff’s Vale

Posted on July 12, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Greg Saunders
Fire Ruby Designs
Warlock!
Beginners

The Vale is a wilderness on the fringes of the Kingdom where a number of factions,

from pilgrims to goblin clans, exist in an uneasy state of truce. Now someone has

shown up to claim a piece of its past, they’ll need adventurers to do it, and what they

will find risks upsetting the delicate balance.

This 76 digest page setting and adventure details a small valley, popular amongst pilgrims, with a lot of generalized hints of what could be going on and a brief ten page “heres something that could happen” adventure. It’s got a nice vibe, and the ideas of things that could be going on are good, but its far far too high level to be called an adventure and way too limited by the digest format to be a good setting.

It’s a valley. There’s a little town/village in it. There is a holy site nearby where pilgrims make their way to, and the people around here make some money off of them. There are goblin bands scattered about, really more like bands of humans bandits in the way they are handled. Protection rackets and opportunists. The town and locales around it have little quirks that make it feel alive and like a real place, and they all tend to be supplemented by a little tables of things that could be going on. Some Red Priests show up and want to go to the holy site for a pilgrimage. The locals are aghast at these heretics. Local priestess is looking for some compromise to keep the locals mollified and not hurt the pilgrim industry. That’s it. Or, “was that a man with the head of a fish that just disappeared into the water?” They are ideas, left open ended. And that’s ok, for something like this. I think they all could have been expanded upon just a bit more with some supporting information for each, to integrate better in to the valley, but, as a high level idea thing it’s fine. And there’s a sly little humor present throughout. One of the first tables is about weather. “Mud. Everywhere.” and “Snow, still snow. WIll it never end?” It does a good job of communicating a a great vibe with a few words. It reminds me a lot of the Dungeon Dozen in its ability to do that, and I don’t think there’s a higher compliment. 

Still, the digest format limits this greatly. As a supplement to run the valley it’s going to be very hard to find the information you’re looking for to add local color. This is going to have to be an almost memorization job for the potential DM. You’re going to need to keep almost everything in your head because there’s both enough local color, and its hard enough to reference in a seventy page digest, that’s its going to be hard to work in well otherwise. Digest, for these longer settings, just doesn’t work. You need more page space and better formatting than “a normal paragraph page style” … which this uses. I’m sure there are exceptions, but those are not the rule.

The adventure included is quite high level also. Frank wants you to go find some artifacts/ of his legendary dad (of the aforementioned holy site) for a ceremony. He sends you to some ruins. In the ruins are a goblin outlaw band, who will talk to you. They’ll let you in the crypt if you go kill the leader of another band, the main one in the area. That guy, if talked to, will send some of his dudes to drive off the first band … but only if you go poison the holy sites water with some laxatives, for the lols. The crypt you gain access to, one way or another, has one room. And the entire adventure is really not handled in a much more complex ay than I just put here. It’s VERY high level notes and not much more than that. As an introduction to the politics of the bands and the valley, supported by the rest of the book, it might be fine, but in terms of supporting the DM running the adventure … well, no. And, it’s full of padding like “With the threat of Izmirelda neutralized (by force, spider-handling, or Ardak’s own goblins), the player characters can get to the back chamber of the crypt, clearly meant for someone important.” That is both a long sentence and a completely empty one for adventure content, saying nothing useful.

I’m disappointed in this. While the various little tables and “hook/rumors” give the impression of a lot going on, there’s not really any support for the DM beyond this. It does a good job of setting up a potential situation, at a very high level, and I can truly see that this could be a great place to adventure and home base in. But the formatting just makes it unusable as a reference book for play and there’s just not enough TO those hooks to support the DM. The entire thing feels like specificity at the level of a hex crawl … which is good for a hex crawl and less good for a regional setting or actual adventure.

This is $14 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages and can give you an overview of the writing style, even if it the generalize background stuff. A few more mixed pages would have been better.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/331841/Warlock-Griffs-Vale?1892600

Still reviewing everything on my Wishlist. I should be done about the end of the next Long Count, where I will op all of my great scientists. In fact, I think have a couple of more of these Warlock! things on it … if I can find one by a different author I might try it.

Posted in Reviews | 4 Comments

Stories from the Slough

Posted on July 10, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By James Andrews & Kent Willmeth
Dapper Rabbit Games
OSR "Low to Mid Levels"

Welcome to the festering swamp. The odd bog. The Seeping Slough. A weird swamp hex-crawl adventure that will have players exploring a dangerous location that contains two dungeons, a village, several unique characters, monsters, and whimsical filth.

This eighty page hex crawl describes a nineteen hex swamp with two dungeons with about a dozen rooms each. A classic minimal hex crawl with a little weird and icky swamp thing going on, it lacks a more detailed summary as well as a motivation for exploring … as all hex crawls do. But, as a classic hex crawl in the same vein as Wilderlands … nicely done!

Hex crawls are their own thing and I’m not capable of reviewing them well … or that anyone else is either, their being so few examples of the genre. Their design is directly related to the way the DM and players will interact with things. Generally, this means that the appropriate level of detail for a hex crawl is quite a bit less than your typical adventure. Hexes tend to be zoomed out situations rather than encounters. You need enough (flavorful) information to present the situation that it will have the potential energy that will drive player action to interact with. The classic would be something like some weirdos have X and Y. By stringing the player actions together you get a kind of emergent play plot in a sandbox. This tends the tope version of sandbox … where the party may not have much motivation to explore beyond what they give their characters … perhaps a kind of gleeful desire to get ahead and poke at things with a stick. We’ll get to that in a bit.

You get nineteen hexes. Each is two miles wide. Each has a little table with six entries; if you append an hour searching the hex then the DM rolls on the table to see what you see. Monsters, situations, NPC’s. In addition, each hex has its own six entry wandering monster table. Each of the encounters and the wanderers gets about a paragraph to describe it, in a large font. This is supported by a “disease table”; the party rolls to catch a disease each night they stay in the swamp, a con check IIRC. Failing gives you a disease, twenty to roll from, and if it progresses too far then you get a mutation. The mutations are sometimes beneficial, sometimes harmful, and generall weird. Like you no longer have blood. Or your head falls off but you are still alive and can eat/drink/talk normally. So … weird … with a touch of the gonzo in it. That’s it. There’s a village in one hex and the two dungeons, one the lair of a witch and one the insides of a dead colossal creature. Now get out there and shake your asses and make it look good!

This suffers from the bane of all hex crawls … why? Why move from hex to hex? It is absolutely the case that it is up to the player to motivate their PC, but the DM, and thus designer, is not off the hook. There should be SOME pretext for moving about. If only “GOLD!” An inciting event, for example. But in this we only get, I think, a single throw-away sentence that the Witch could be the reason the reason for exploring the swamp. And without anything else it’s left solely up to the DM and players to solve this, the primary problem, with ALL hex crawls. 

Issue two with hex crawls is the nature of their encounters. You want situations more than static things. You’re looking to build connections between the various things going to drive the players, as the DM, and as the players to take advantage of and leverage. This is, I think, THE critical aspect of a good hex crawl. And this … well … in most cases it’s better just to keep travelling. 

There is a body hung up in a tree. It’s dead and you can loot it. There’s a big crocodile. You sleep under a giant flower, your blood turns yellow. A bunch of weeds with a wizards body at the bottom of it. Some of the encounters ARE linked to each otherl a body in a tree that some other dudes are looking for and their village welcomes you if you bring it home. And, there’s a little NPC mechanic where, when you meet the same NPC multiple times, their situation changes. One guy wants to kill the witch and the fourth/last time to run in to him he’s a zombie now … having met the witch and lost. So, you wander around through an Ed Greenwood museum and maybe get some loot. The number of encounters in which you can leverage towards achieving some other goal seem to be very small. And I don’t just mean intentional linkages, like the dead person in the tree and the grateful villagers. I mean Things Going On To Be leveraged. You want ongoing situations in one area and other situations and resources that the party, by way of wacky PC logic, will try to do something with. And that doesn’t seem to be very present here.

Individually, the encounters are interesting. Sure, I’d love to find a body with a glowing amulet under some reeds, or the lumberjacks who drink, wrestle and eat far too rare meat … (actually, bad example, you might be able to leverage those dudes … that’s a good place, but they NEED something, r rather, the adventure should probabally have them needing something.) Still, the locations are far too self-contained. Now, certainly, not everything needs to be linked, and there is a place in the world for statics, but you need a good mix and I just don’t think that this has it. 

Still, I’m fond of this. Housecats that won’t stay dead until you kill them 1d10-1 more times. “A half collapsed stone fountain depicting hunters chasing wolves, who in turn chase the same hunters. It trickles water slowly. Those who drink the water become youthful and healthy in the moonlight.” There’s a whimsy to the encounters, and they don’t feel like de rigeur D&D. I just … I don’t see them working together in order to be able to form a cohesive line for the party to follow, or force. Again, not in a plot way but in a emergent gameplay way. At least … I THINK that’s what hex crawls are about?

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is broken. I can haz sadz.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/357751/Stories-from-the-Slough?1892600

BONUS FEATURE! – The Rad Hack

On my wishlist for a long, and you just know I LUV me some Gamma World! It’s got cute art and is … The Black Hack but with mutants and human supremacists. Meh. It’s not like Gamma World is the worlds most complex game, even 2e or 3e (Fuck you! I liked 3e! I think the chart worked better than it did in MSH!)  IF a certain GAVIN was listening he’d do an OSE but for Gamma World. That’s the main advantage of this: the simple and easy to reference rules. But, the charm of the setting is lost in the abridged rules, and, the cute art aint enough to get it back.

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

The Book and The Spring

Posted on July 7, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Christopher Letzelter
Anachronistes Press
OSRIC
Levels 4-7

PC’s get more than they bargained for when they undertake a quest to destroy a recently-captured tome of black magic. Standing in their way are an unforgiving desert, a cursed and ruined city, an ancient tomb, and a dried-up spring. Oh, and lots of unexpected foes and tricky situations, of course.

This 52 page adventure is a Real Deal lost city adventure, with over 350 rooms, primarily in two large multi-level dungeons. It is also, I think, nigh-unrunnable without devoting a couple of weeks, or months, of your life to it, illustrating just about every surface-level bad design decision possible. A major, major overhaul of this would turn it in to a classic of the genre.

The parties intro to this is much in the same format as G1; the armies of light have been going at it against the Evil Dudes and a group have returned with an evil artifact, a book that is indestructible. While everyone else is off waging war against the moat house and temple, the party is given the task of destroying the book, which the seers say can be done in a lost city out in the desert. 

A lost city with the tomb of an evil king (multi level dungeon) guarding by some good pilgrims, fending off incursions of an evil cult who are lairing in the palace of the evil wizard (multi-level dungeon) with some outbuildings to explore, an underground passage out StoneSky, and a couple of independent entities in the ruins, like a dragon and lamia … as well as the usual hangers on of vermin, undead, deserters and so on. The two major dungeons have over 150 rooms each, meaning we get about eight rooms per page … in an adventure that is pretty much, front to back, nothing but encounter keys with only a little front and back padding. It’s got some light Sumerian theming, which drew me to it in the first place. (Fun fact: in a con game, revealing you have a brand of Gilgamesh means you always get to play Gilgamesh!) 

In a world of mini-adventure and four-hour complete games, this is a complex adventure. This is more of an expedition, and a hard one at that, more akin to Gaxmoor or other products. You’re gonna need to bring everything with you and plan to stay for a few weeks, I suspect. Cause this place is FUCKING HARD. While the majority of the human factions are 1HD fighters (yeah! Great to see that!) there are a wide variety of 4 and 5hd monsters, numerous, along with hard traps and the like that are going to make multiple forays in to plays a necessity. And then, of course, the factions may hit you back while you camp. Or that dragon may come by for a snack. (Ok, dragonne, close enough.) Wanderers, while tending to be generic desert encounters, are checked twice a day and twice at night … which may give enough time for some recovery.  While I usually prefer my wanderers with a little more life in them, somehow the generic desert stuff like pit vipers, dust storms and nomads, seems to work well in this environment. I think it’s the slower/longer playstyle with established party camps that can lead to better emergent play opportunities. I understand shorter self-contained adventures are the norm these days, but this shows one of the strengths of a longer game … and, in contrast, what you need to do in a shorter game in order to help recreate that emergent vibe the longer ones help foster naturally.

This thing is a mess, from a layout and writing viewpoint.

Read-aloud can be a quarter of page long, and in italics, leading to both usability issues for the DM and “another droning room description” for the players. It can be sprinkled with overly dramatic language like “you feel tiny, helpless, and uneasy, as if someone or something is watching you.” … which commits the sin of telling instead of showing. Ideally you want to write a description that makes the players think they are tiny, helpless and uneasy, instead of telling them they are … and “you” is almost never appropriate in read-aloud because of this. It further dips in to simulationist territory with a lot of exact dimension and detail in the read-aloud, instead of leaving that for the party themselves to discover and thereby contributing to tearing down that key game element: the interactivity between players and DM as they explore and discover. “Two open portals beckon in the north edifice.” *eyeroll*

It engages in that favorite device of the hard adventure: gimping the players. No divination spells, creatures turn as two levels higher, and so on. The party has earned their abilities and they should be able to use them as such. Figure out another way or accept that for every divination spell cast to gain an edge there is a fireball not being cast. It also engages in something more natural. The heat causes issues for fighters in full armor. “This module will be that much more enjoyable for the players if you enforce these armor penalties.” Well … not in my experience. I get it. It’s trying for a naturalistic nerf and there’s a little simulationst thing going on here also. But, simulationism is only good in as much as it helps with the suspension of disbelief. And while I’m generally supportive of these more natural ways to nerf a party (the wizards tower is on top of a 1000’ high tree, fly if you can …) I don’t think I have ever seen heat or cold handled in an adventure in a way that is both not cumbersome and fun. It has always come across as punishment for playing the adventure. And in a level 4-7 adventure that is already quite hard? It just seems grueling, the party are no demi-god levels of powerful yet. Fuck, they might not even have fireball.

It does also engage in some other questionable design decisions, like a sepia snake sigil. Well done, there’s a cobra drawing on the wall so its not a throw away, I still raise my eyebrows at anything that seems like it’s trying to use the rules to create a in-game effect, rube goldberg style. (That’s a normal noun now, right? I mean, you don’t have to use it like a proper name? xerox VS Xerox?) And, of course, the required “you can’t open the door until you defeat the monster nonsense. I can think of one random monster encounter in the desert, with vultures, in which if you kill a vulture you are cursed. Just out of the blue. Step on a crack and break your mothers back. If you’re going to do this sort of thing then you need some hints or some way to telegraph it, or make it a conscious choice. LOTS of vultures around, you’re starving, and you know that they are sacred to Old Asshole the Very Active God of Punishing People Who Fuck With His Sacred Animals. Otherwise, this is just an arbitrary negative consequence … again, punished for playing the game.

DM text is long and confused as well. There’s a mix of in-line stats and stat blocks. While I’m not religious about either, I do find that the inline stats in this adventure just make things all the harder to scan. It could be the formatting selected and/or fonts and bolding, parens, etc. It seems to break over multiple lines, three or so, which causes you to lose what’s going on in the room. Then there’s the embedded history and backstory of the room. One room with gnolls, states “Their previous employers were more interested in building a temple stronghold and magical gain; this group is seeking a greater financial reward, and will fight heartily to keep the little bit they’ve plundered and stolen . One of the gnolls has just recently been grabbed and eaten by the inhab- itant of 12.” Well, ok, that adds nothing to the encounter at all. But that sort of thing does make digging through a simple gnoll encounter in to a pain in the ass to scan. And while treasure gets a good treatment, it tends to be ALL treasure that gets this. Even coins. Like CP and SP. “each gnoll has pouches or folds holding …” and “that is valued at …” and tons of other padding that does nothing for the comprehension of the adventure. Nothing positive that is. Ug, and we get LONG empty room descriptions. Simulationist again, above playability. “If anyone ventures past the entrance with a light they will see …” Uh huh. Just describe the fucking room man. This turns a nice and interesting little jaunt through the desert around the walls of the city, filled with sinkholes, in to a painful affair you have to fight through in order to run it. 

A disturbing number of encounters, the vast majority I’d say, do something like “they will have just spotted the characters” or they surprise the characters. Or they are waiting for the characters or something like that. And this leads to the bigger picture.

This place is too complex with no help for the DM to figure it out. There are NO summaries of what’s going oin in these place. Order of battle is mixed in to room descriptions tens of encounters away. “Frank will gather his friends in #21 if he hears sounds of battle in room 2 and will respond by …” ARRGGG!! This goes in room 2, or up front as a general reference! You can’t fucking run someonething like this. In these hundreds of rooms bases/lairs/dungeons, you need a summary of what’s going on, where things are, how things might go and so on. Given the amount of padding, figuring it out for yourself is going to take a hard core week with a highlight and a fresh notebook. 

And, frankly, I’m not going to fucking do that. I’m not going to buy an adventure and then burn an absurd amount of prep time in order to run it. Sure, big adventures DO need some prep time. But not this much man. I like the maps, clean and interesting. The adventuring environment is at least as interesting as most adventures and more so generally. But the usability and evocative writing here is just terrible. Yes, evocative writing is hard, I will give you that. 

Still, I’m so close to giving this No Regerts. A real deal lost city adventure, an expedition that feels titanic and varied. But fuck, it needs a COMPLETE overhaul in its writings and presentation. 

This is $9 at DriveThru. It’s sold in a weird way, with the encounters in one PDF and you have to buy a separate product to get the maps and wanderer tables, appendices, etc. SO you HAVE to have both of them to run this. And yet they are sold as two separate products. LAME! And, the preview doesn’t work. *sigh*

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/253075/The-Book-and-The-Spring–Encounters–Sourcebook?1892600

Blah blah blah blah reviewing everything on my wishlist as a pretext to not actually write the main book blah blah blah balh

Posted in Reviews | 4 Comments

The Valley of Karaccia

Posted on July 5, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Matthew Evans
Mithgarthy Entertainment
B/X
Levels 1-2

Responding to a flier promising payment for kobold heads, the party gathers in the town of Brink. From there, they set out on an expedition to the Crimson Caverns, a known kobold lair. After proving their met- tle, the PCs will be hired by the Church of Erm to recover a needed artifact from Fallsbarrow.

This 24 page adventure features three dungeons with multiple levels and about seventy rooms. It’s got a clean three-column format, but is essentially minimally keyed with just a hint of a few extra words. It’s also going to be hard as all fuck for level one and two hobos.

Our action starts quickly. The column read-aloud details the party having a meal in an inn, getting taunted by a local worthy, and then traveling to a cave full of kobolds to stand outside it …  there being a reward for kobold heads. No real fucking about here and, I must say, my preferred way of starting a level one campaign. Short to no time in town and lets play some fucking D&D man! The additional of the taunting by the local bravo is a nice touch, even though he and his friends are found dead in the very first room. Nice detail AND a missed opportunity, all at the same time. 

The rooms here are essentially minimally keyed. “Bones from a few different creatures litter the floor beneath the drop here. Otherwise this area is empty.” or “Two ghouls sitting on the floor rise to attack.” That’s not much for a DM to go on. I get it, minimally keying is a thing and I would certainly prefer it to the text onslaught that most adventures seem to suffer from. It does allow for putting fifteen rooms on just two pages, with the extra text mostly being things like details like “ghouls paralyze creatures of less than an ogres size, make a save blah blah blah” … rules notes that offer little. However, it’s 2021. A little extra room description would go a long way. Something to create an evocative environment, or even a creature description. This can be done without a significant amount of extra text and in most cases can replace the notes on “make a save to not be paralyzed” and so on that pad out this adventures text.

A certain number of rooms do receive just a little bit more text. “The two statues in the north and south are made of green marble, and are of previous patriarchs of the church. The eastern statue is made of crystal and depicts the goddess Erm. All other niches contain sarcophagi.” So, fact based and not a lot to get the DMs juices going. 

The maps are mostly simple star and branching things. One of the systems does have a shaft with three level exits, which provides some decent variety. The first kobold dungeon has two levels, while the second dungeon has one level, then you go to the “shaft” caves to get an item and return and use the item to open up the second level. This is good. A little non-linear play and at least the fetching of the red key for the red door, or the statues missing gemstone eye in this case, is at a secondary location.

The homebase doesn’t overstay its welcome, only being a page long, but it really add nothing to the adventure … it could not be there at all and you’d not be missing anything. Well, anything except the level fourteen cleric in town who gives you the mission for the second dungeon. Eeek! Why doesn’t he go do it? I guess because he’s 60? And he offers raise deads for about 1500 gp at first level … that whole thing doesn’t make sense at all. He hook for the second dungeon is that his apprentice is cursed by an evil object and he wants you to go to the second dungeon to get something to cure her … with no real mention of the thing that cursed her in the first place … a sure miss since the players are sure to inquire and want to follow up on it. Still, level 14 … How about we put him in a cart and wheel him around and act as his bodyguards while he cures, turns, and stuff?

And I say that because the poser levels here are crazy. Decently sized groups of 2HD ghouls, a 5HD queen ghoul, a 6HD bone golem. That shaft dungeon? It’s main shaft is 100’ long and is full of 2HD vines that fuck up the party. I get it, OSR and all that, you can run away. But a star with branching off hallways doesn’t give a lot of tactical options. This just seems beyond what even Run Away offers.

There are other nits. If you bargain with the priest and roll less than an 8 on 2d6 then there will be no adventure for you. That’s a lot of fun. Some rooms say things like “the sounds of battle in the next room attract the monsters here.” … which should really be in the room with the sounds of battle, or noted on the map or something.

It’s basic, nothing wrong with that. When you combine this with minimal keying a little effort at evocative writing, well, maybe you’re in to that. I’m not. There’s a bright spot or to, like exploring down the long shaft full of vines. Ultimately, you have to ask yourself what sort of value you expect to get out of an adventure. Rooms with little more than a monster standing in it, with little to no descriptive text … Meh. I got better things to do with my life.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages. Pages six and seven show the kobold lair, so, from that you can get an idea of minimal keying and decide for yourself if its something you want in your life. So, good preview!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/359427/RC1–The-Valley-of-Karaccia?1892600

This is episode Oh God How Long Can This Go On of Bryce reviews everything on his wishlist.

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 1 Comment

Tales of Highcliff Gard

Posted on July 3, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Simon Todd
Monti-Dots Creation
OSRIC
Low Levels

The Tales of Highcliff Gard contains complete mapped building descriptions of the valley of Highcliff Gard, each with their own adventure hooks, characters and their histories and at least two full dungeon adventures. Whether you have bought The curse of Highcliff Gard or Necromancer’s Bane or not, The Tales of Highcliff Gard provides a rich resource for a campaign of your own making or an inspirational read for fantasy gamers of all systems. 

This 73 page thing is … I don’t really know what it is. I guess it’s supposed to be a regional guide for the village of Highcliff Gard and some small environs around it, where two other adventures are set. It has a small dungeon described and several event-like things that could happen in the area, as well as about ten locations fully described. In detail. Excruciating detail. It’s more a … I don’t know, maybe one of those little books that local county historical societies sometimes put out?

This was going to be the bonus feature for my last review, since I didn’t think it was an adventure. But once I opened it and saw the page count and saw “two full adventures included!” and about twenty pages devoted to encounters, about a fourth of the book, I decided to make it a main review. My bad. I’m not good at regional settings.

I like towns, and regional settings. I like the concept of local places for the party to get in to, to have little things sprinkled around during their downtimes that build up through emergent play between “the real adventures.” Recurring personalities and places; I think it adds an enormous amount to a game. I just don’t know how the fuck to review them.

I do know that there is a level of detail appropriate to a location, and its purpose. The full history of every rock is probably not appropriate. Nor is never mentioning the rocks in an adventure about rock people. As the region is zoomed further and further out the degree of detail should be less, and more targeted at what’s relevant. Which is not to say that you can’t mention the old quarry close to the town, if it has nothing going on, but maybe you don’t need to fully stat it out. Further, the emphasis on what is described and how it is described should probably be on things that could lead the DM to real play, either directly, as in an adventure, or indirectly in the case of a regional guide, serving as something for the DM to sprinkle in and use. If you’re going to write three paragraphs on the various quantities and varieties of trees in the local woods then that should probably either be directly related to something going on or have some potential for the DM to use it in an obvious way. Otherwise we enter the realm of the simulationist and anecdotal … hence my comparison to the local county historical societies booklet on the history of the Robinson household and their 2000 acre holding. (Church cookbooks and local historical society booklets: Fascinating!) 

“Tales of Highcliff Gard has entered the chat”

This is a small town, Highcliff Gard, as well as just a little bit of the region around it. Just a bit. It’s the setting around which two other adventures take place, The Cure of Harken Hall and Necromancers Bane, both of which I believe I have reviewed in the past. This place is a mess. And not from an adventuring standpoint, but from a purpose standpoint. It covers the wrong things and covers them in the wrong way. What we have here, for the locations described, is far far too much detail about the wrong things. One of the described locations is an inn. The innkeeper has a family. Here’s the description for one of his kids:

“Lavinia, known as Little Vi, is 13. She has spent her childhood having adventures of her own and getting herself into trouble. Arno remains both proud and perplexed by her and swears she is the reincarnation of Marduke. Arno has the burning desire to see his family linked with the nobility beyond association and plans to marry Lavinia off to one of the Harken sons. Lavinia is horrified by the idea and currently ‘hates’ her father. Her mother maintains a tough stance advising her to do as her father bids. Vi can often be found with the Harken daughter Leonora and they plan to adventure together when they are older.”

This is how you get to 73 pages. 

Or, perhaps, the description of a washroom? 

“6. THE WASH ROOM. Water is brought up using the attic pulley on the north side of the building (7.) then heated on a small stove. This room is humid and often filled with steam. Most linen is cleaned here in baths before being hung on lines in the court yard of the tavern. This also doubles as the washroom for the staff.”

Very nice. Irrelevant to anything going on, but very nice. The major locations, about of those described, take a lot of pages to describe, with descriptions of mundane bedrooms, common rooms and the like. After each there might be five or six adventure hooks like “Someone at the inn has been killed. The owner wants the party to find out who did it before his reputation is ruined.” Very, very general.The location descriptions, the people, etc, are generally very focused on the LOCATION as being the primary important (or person, etc) rather than how they might interact, or be interacted with, by the party and the potential energy of situations that might develop. The focus is on the wrong aspect.

In the rear is twenty pages of encounters. There’s a wandering monster section that is little more than a table, and a little section on how winter changes the place. Then there are a number of little adventure ideas, or sort little things. Like you are escorting a messenger and they get attacked by an overwhelming number of bandits … the party is expected to run away and then come back to find out they are soldiers from a neighboring kingdom. That’s the extent of it. Or some mob villagers picking on a gypsy to lynch them. Maybe a couple of hours of play from most of these. One is a tad longer and might take an entire evening; the sighting of the local “if you see her you die within a month” ghost of a weaver girl. Tracking down the why of her ghost and then fixing it. This is about two pages of a mix of high level content. Then there’s a little dungeon with twelve rooms. The first room takes about two pages to describe. A column or a page is not uncommon. This is unrunnable. 

Too much detail, covering the wrong things, that’s the best I can do to review something that is not an adventure. 

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is the first six pages. While not perfect, you have to imagine the writing style on those pages is present throughout, for everything, at this level of detail. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/192985/The-Tales-of-Highcliff-Gard?1892600

This has been episode “No one really gives a fuck, Bryce” of Bryce revieweing everything on his wishlist.

Posted in Reviews | 5 Comments

Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss

Posted on June 30, 2021 by Bryce Lynch

By Frederick Foulds

Oneiromantic Press

B/X

Levels 2-4

They say Ursodiol the Mad was the greatest mind to have ever breached the great Cosmic Void; that he looked beyond the myriad stars and the blackest depths of the hells into the swirling magical protoplasmic morass that is the beginning and end of everything. When they found his corpse, so hideously changed was it that it drove those who saw it to madness and despair. Fearful, they entombed him in the crypt of his forbears and sealed it tight. But little did they know that Ursodiol brought back something with him from his cosmic journey. And it is hungry…

This 51 page digest adventure features a ten room dungeon with a decent amount going on in each room, enough to justify its page count. It’s a pretty basic adventure, with elements of otherworldly horror, using a bullet point formatting that it mostly gets right. A lot going on ni each room for a basic adventure.

So, little village has an issue, people going amnesiac, crops withering, rocks beeling, and so on. This leads to a teen room family croyt, with some undead, animated statues, vermin, and an otherworldly plant-like creature with hints of The Thing. Poke about in the rooms, maybe get some undead pointers, and then hit the thing with acid and fire, hopefulling looting enough to make everything worthwhile.

This has an … interesting format. It starts off with a sentence or two, in italics, that gives some kind of overview of the room. This may, in fact, be the absolute weakest part of the adventure, in every room. It’s a little purple in places, and gives a kind of overview that doesn’t seem to be a room concept, and doesn’t seem to be aimed at the players, and doesn’t seem to be aimed at the DM. One of the first is “Grandly decorated, a statue of G’vane stands in silent judgement of those who approach, whether they are here to mourn or to gain passage to the Great Beyond.” And another “A small chamber of religious respite, where bodies were brought to be viewed before being entombed in the crypt proper.” The rest follow in this manner. So, kind of like a room concept? But the writing is closer to what I would expect (overly grand …) if I were expected it aimed at the players as read-aloud. But then it goes on to reveal too much. It doesn’t seem to really have any place in the room, providing nothing to either the player or the DM. 

What follows are a series of major section headings, noting large rooms features. Each of these then has a series of bolded words, followed by a few words in parens. So you move from the general to the more specific, making it easy for the DM to follow up on things. Very good in concept. In practice … there’s enough in the rooms that, combined with the digest format, the major headings run over from page to page. There’s A LOT to note. 

In the first decently sized room. About 30×30 with a statue in the middle, according to the map. Our major headings are “Atmospherics, Decor, White Marble Statue of G’vane, Iron Doors, Giant Rats, Stairs, Secret Door” And then a large stat block for the Giant Rats and a table of diseases. (Good adventure support! That’s one of the reasons the page count is higher than normal for an adventure this size.) Our second level bolding, for the Decor, is “Grand, Stone Owls, Lined with tapestries, Cracked Flagstone. Then, at the third level, the parens for these elements are “20’ high rib vaulted ceiling carved with painted oak leave, stand by each corner quietly staring, faded and mouldering, cover the floor.” It make more sense when you see it in action. 

There’s a LOT to look at and poke at and clean ovv and examine in each room. That’s good. A door covered in rust reveals a family emblem and motto, that is useful later. I don’t call each room a set piece, but they definitely take more time and are more indepth than the usual dungeon fare. 

The primary issue I have is the selected major and minor headings. I get sections for atmosphere, decor, and the major elements, but it seems like it could organized much better, and perhaps trimmed back a bit. In the example text, the status is the most obvious thing, and maybe the grand environment, and the iron doors. I might lead with those elements, or put them in some kind of summary paragh/sentence. There is SO much going on, in terms of details and things to examine, in these rooms that the selected format is close to be insufficient. (It could be that the printed book uses a two-page spread and is thus a bit easier to grok “at a glance.”)

The adventure, proper, is a pretty basic family crypt, with defleshing room, osuary, chapel, the family crypt, statues, and so on. There are a decent number of things to play with, secret compartments to find, walls/tapestries/doors covered with something to clean off, statues holding things to play with (books, balance, etc.) There’s a lot to do and a lot to explore. And then you add the blood moss in. It’s a kind of alien plant that animated skeletons and has its own pseudo-pod thing like attacks, and a some mental attacks as well. This gives it a kind of vibe like The Thing. These elements could have pushed more, the blood red tendrils covering everything, an the horror of the creatures, to help magnify those aspects of the adventures. It’s not really an after-through, but it could have been pushed more to make it more forward, since it IS a major element of the adventure.

I’m not sure about treasure it does seem a tad light. A thorough looting (which the spirits inside are going to take exception to) might get you a lot more, I think? It’ still seems a little light for a B/X game. I guess, maybe, as an evenings adventure that gets you 25% of the way to the next level? Meh, ok, that seems ok to me.

So, straightforward adventure in a tomb, that you could have its horror elements pushed more and using a decent format that perhaps needed a reworking of the selected keywords, and reordering, to help with the length of the rooms. A decent attempt!

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is eleven pages and does a good job of showing you the rooms and writing. Check it out!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/319604/Ominous-Crypt-of-the-Blood-Moss?1892600

Episode blah blah blah of me reviewing everything on my wishlist. Yeah, yeah, those long expensive things you requested ages ago are finally going to show up.

Posted in Reviews, The Best | 5 Comments

Chewer of Fingers

Posted on June 28, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Glynn Seal
MonkeyBlood Design
S&W
Level 3

The PCs are heading to Fetterstone because there is a 20 gold quid reward for the capture of an escaped criminal called ‘The Finger Chewer’. He absconded from Middlemoor Gaol five days ago and is believed to be hiding out in the surrounding oft-foggy marsh. The marsh is notoriously dangerous and even the lure of 20 gold quids isn’t enough to entice the locals into its fetid clutches.

This 32 page adventure uses eight pages to describe four encounters. It’s got those idiosyncratic setting details that help cement a locale in the mind of the players, but the lack of content, both by page count and “kill three dogs is the sum of the adventure”  is disheartening.

For $15 and 32 pages you get four encounters. First, you might help an old shew of a mean lady pull her cow out of the mud. Second, you visit the inn and maybe get arrested or get glared at by the local witchfinder. Third, you go to the prison on the hill and search the convicts cell, learning that he does indeed chew fingers and one guy saw the direction he left. Fourth, you follow a trail if fingers in to the swamp (which is handled in as many words as I just typed), find his dead body, and fight three rat-dogs. ChChing! Profit!

Yeah, that’s it. There’s an appendix showing a cave system map you could expand in to your own dungeon. There’s a description of local farms in the neighborhood, that will not ever be explored by the PC’s. There’s a description of a few other prisoners in the prison, that will probably not be used. There are some very nice maps for all the locations and wilderness settings. 

The maps list the location names on the map, along with t keys, and are nicely done. No complaints. It’s exactly how a map of this sort should be handled. 

The setting location is interesting. Gloombugs, rolling mists, sullen villagers you tell you to piss off while serving shitty food. A witchfinder up in your business. Exactly the kind of people you want to stab for breathing the same air you do. There’s a collection of weird laws (like … not helping someone unstick a pig stuck in mud …) that are cutely display on a handout, and a disturbing amount of references to turnips. It’s got that specificity that you need in order to hang your hat on.

It is also LONG. That opening scene with the fucking pig, cow, whatever, if four pages long, including the map. To deal with a grumpy old lady and stuck pig minigame or “getting enough weight behind it and stuffing enough ginger up its ass. 

I’m not the biggest fan of the format here, straight up paragragh text. It does use some highlighting and some decent whitespace to break things up, but, it is still essentially just long form paragraph use that you have to dig through. Three pages of digging through for that first encounter. 

I’d be interested in the setting, but the adventure? There’s just nothing to it. I DO like fucking around in town when I play, but there’s got to be adventure also. And talking to the locals DOES count, but, come on, one combat with three dogs for $15?

This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview is decent, showing you the writing to come. Go ahead and take a look at the long form text. Nicely specific.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/329417/Chewer-of-Fingers?1892600

BONUS FEATURE! – Encounters Fantasy Scenarios

Fuck me. Another oldy from 1990. Sixty pages of “tables” to help create an encounter using a tarot deck (*sigh*). It’s a dense wall of text. This is getting tossed on my “read on my deathbed while waiting to die” pile.

I’ll pay someone $10 to write a two page or longer review of this.

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

Carnage Amongst the Depraved

Posted on June 26, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By John Josten
Board Enterprises
OSR/Legend Quest/die-20
Level 6

There are trolls, close to the city.  Why?  What are their plans?  And when will they choose to start acting directly against the humans and elves who live in the region?  Perhaps the best question might be will the party be able to do something about it?  In this adventure, that is the challenge – Can they find a way to beat the trolls, because simply facing them sword to sword is not going to work against soldiers this fierce.

This sixty page adventure uses fourteen pages to describe a 23 room hack of ogres and trolls. It’s MASSIVELY overwritten, with everything pebble having a backstory and justification for it being there. Fuck me, the 90’s were a bad time for adventures. 

Yes, the 90’s. This is some reprint of an adventure for a 90’s heartbreaker system. There seem to be a dozen or more adventures in it, so they kept at it. And continue to, it still seems to be alive today. Be it that 90’s style at the time or the same traits that lead to developing your own game system “that makes sense”, this thing shows all the hallmarks of over investiture. 

Sixty pages, of which only fourteen are actually the dungeon. That means a  lot of backstory, a lot of history, a lot of appendices, and a lot of telling the DM how the game should be played. We get to hear all about how to play dumb characters and creatures. Then the adventure proper shows up, a simple hack rescue. The first encounter is a page and a half, a lot take a column and a few empty rooms get only a paragraph or two. 

Everything … EVERYTHING gets a fucking backstory. Nothing can be simple. Everything has to be padded out. The opening room, a simple guardpost, gets EIGHT paragraphs. There’s a troll and ogre behind a cracked door. The troll is eating some mutton and the ogre is unconscious, having been beaten by the troll. Eight fucking paragrapghs to describe that. And how can this be? Is it the Kwisatz Haderach? No. Here’s just one of those eight paragraphs: “The trolls do not consider the dwarven fortress to be of any value and do not think of it as an entrance. This is not so much a room as an intersection of hallways. Many of the trolls like this assignment because they feel there is nothing to do but sit. The area is lit by a single torch set in a brace on the wall.” 

This is my life. Long italics read-aloud. Wall of text DM text full of meaningless backstory. “Strange and disgusting scents”, full of abstracted descriptions. Room descriptions that make you fight them just to understand how many creatures are in a room. All for a simple hack in a dungeon full of ogres and trolls. 

The opening recruitment section does have some bolded sections to help the DM when King Whoever’s agent is responding to the party’s questions. That’s good. It recognizes that the DM needs to be able to find and reference information quickly. The bolding calls attention to this, offsetting it when scanned, so you can find it quickly. And that care  is absolutely NOT taken in one other place during the actual adventure. 

It’s unrunnable. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages and only shows a few f the essays and background up front. Nothing of the encounters. Bad bad bad preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/354481/Carnage-Amongst-the-Depraved-aka-All-About-Big-Stupid-Monsters–World-Walkers-edition?1892600

This has been episode “It’s too cold this morning for a bike ride and the liquor stone dont open for another hour.” of Bryce reviews everything on his DriveThru wishlist.

BONUS FEATURE! – Building Adventures

This is about a hundred digest pages on how to write an adventure. It follows the basic plot-based 3-act structure that overwhelmingly dominates these days. As a basic introduction to that it’s not bad. The purpose of the villain in the opening act is to X. The purpose of the villain in the middle act is to Y. The purpose of the villain in the ending act is to Z. It covers the basic structure of an adventure, from introductions, beginning the adventure, and a VERY basic adventure outline structure, ensuring the budding writer includes those elements that we’ve all come to expect, like a background/introduction.

You might think of it as the 3-act structure focused on D&D play. As such it’s ok. Too wordy for what it is, and you could probably do better getting a really good 3-act book. Besides, after two thousand reviews the problems with adventure is not that they use a 3-act structure or that they fail to make the 3-acts compelling.

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

For Coin & Blood Adventure Pack

Posted on June 23, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Diogo Nogueira, Elizabeth Chaipraditkul
Gallant Knight Games
For Coin & Blood

It seems that this is actually two separate adventures, totally distinct downloads, bundled under one product listing on DriveThru, with the teaser photo being the core Coin & Blood cover photo. 

The Hunted – Diogo Levels 2-3

This sixteen page digest thing is a description of an NPC hunting the party. That’s it. That’s the adventure. Oh, you get some ideas on how they do that. FUCKING LAME!

I was disappointed when I saw the two downloads thing, but then was upbeat when I saw Diogo’s name. He says, a couple of times, that his is an “unconventional” adventure. Yeah, no shit. Because it’s not an adventure.

You get a description of an NPC bounty hunter, a tale for why they might be hunting the party, one for sme tactics they use, a table of traps they mights use ot places they might attack the party, We are told to sprinkle the stuff in during the parties other adventures, a kind of expansion of their downtime. 

So, look, I’m not opposed to this. In fact, I think downtime shit can be one of the more memorable parts of a campaign, And I love sprinkling stuff in to a game ahead of time in order to make the world seem more real and lived in. I’m just opposed to everything about this.

We get a 2.5 page description of the NPC. Only a few sentences are the actual description and mannerisms, and they are fairly generic. Tall muscular woman with dark hair. That’s great. My imagination burns. I’m not fucking around, other than dark leather armor and a crimson cloak, that’s what two paragraphs gets you. The rest of the pags of her description are right out of a “let me tell you about my character” story. She has basilisk skin armor and it’s hard as metal and if you hit ger you make a save or take 1d3 damage and are at disadvantage net turn and she has a sin seeking dagger which ignores your armor and does 1d4 damage per round and she has a …. 

After this are a couple of tables. How she undermines you, who hired her to kill you, and some traps. “A former ally hired her who was hired by the powerful opposition …” “a demon who needs the parties souls but can’t take direct action against them …” the usual not very good stuff and controted reasons. Traps like “oil barrels open and spill contents on the party as they pass under a bridge” or “in a wizards lair she puts fake books on the walls.” Contorted stuff. If this is how Coin & Blood is played then I’m super not interested in it.

The “undermine the party” table is not too bad, but still has that implicit contorted game world shit where she does this instead of just poisoning them with cyanide, or something. She starts lies about the party, she sends messages from people the party has killed in the past, she fucks the parties home base inn, etc. A little too much “she uses her doppleganger cream” in them, and, still, the whole “just kill them” thing, ala Dr. Evil & Scott, but, whatever. Magical ren world.

Oh her and her former adventuring partner broke up because of an “emotional conversation.” Why, isn’t that generic? Nothing like that to liven things up and cement an NPC in your minds.

Not. Good.

Sickness, Elizabeth Chaipraditkul, No Level Range

This sixteen page thing is one of those skeezy abstracted adventures, mor forge-like story than an adventure. Guidelines? Toolkit? Or, maybe, “I had an idea and wrote down four ideas and then expanded it to sixteen pages but didn’t include anything to support the DM.” I am not amused.

Maybe you could have an adventure on the way through the city while looking for who framed you. Maybe the party should find out who cursed them and spend some time in the city doing so. Maybe there are guards at the house and maybe the party bribes them or something.

This, then, is a cardinal sin. If the job of an adventure is to support the DM, what if the adventures DOESN’T do that? What if I jotted down some notes on a notepad. Something like “Get hired by a cult that uses a theater as a base.” “Kidnap a guy from a naor for them.” “Get cured with an illness.” and “Evil baddie behind it all was at the manor all along!” That’s your adventure! Pay me!

Ok, ok, I’ll expand it some. How about I write A LOT of read-aloud in italics, so it’s hard to read? How about I support the DM with some ideas. Like, I could write that there are some guard patrols at the manor and the party could, like, ambush a ship captain to steal an invite to the house. I’m only half-assing this, so I’m not going to write much more than that, above. Oh, and one of the “acts” is for the party to go find out who cursed them. They should go do that. “They should go do that”, that’s enough support for the DM, right?

This “adventure” is devoid of content. Abstractions and generalizations. A lack of specificity. No actual support, AT ALL, for the DM. Just some ideas. Hey, maybe the party should find out who cursed them. You, the DM, should handle that. What the fuck? Seriously? 

Thanks to this adventure I do haze a skeezy new business plan to offer my readers. Find a newly released RPG. The hotness. Write an adventure for it. Maybe, I don’t know, have like four ideas and jot them down, expand them very generically, don’t try very hard. Slap a cover on it and release it for the game. Profit. Maybe do a second one, or just move on to the new Hotness. I expect 10% of your take. 

“The person he wants the characters to abduct is a young man by the name of …” Padded out enough for you? Jesus H fucking christ. It’s all conversational long paragraph form writing, impossible to follow or reference during play, impossible to find anything or key in on the interesting bits. This is the perfect example of an empty shovelware adventure. 

The entirety of “sneak in to the mansion” is handled with “Players could avoid the guard entirely—by watching the guard’s patrolling pattern the character could slip into the mansion without noticing.” like, seriously, what the fuck? No map or anything? It’s just a list of fucking ideas of things that the party could engage in with little to no support for them. Sandboxy? OSR. Plot based? Modern games. Opened AND plot based? Devoid of content. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. I’d be pretty fucking pissed if I got this for Christmas.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/334236/For-Coin–Blood-2e-Adventure-Pack?1892600

This has been episode “I knew there was a reason I skipped over shit on my wishlist!” of Bryce reviews everything on his DriveThru wishlist.

BONUS FEATURE! –  The Anatomy of an Adventure

It seems Senor MT Black is going to tell us how to write an adventure! Let’s see if it’s better than the DCC one. Or Vengers. Or any of a billion other ones …

Clocking in at 106 digest pages, this is less a book on how to write an adventure and more of a designers notes for some of Blacks adventures, that serve as anchor points for some lessons in marketing, player choice, and a few other concepts. I like designers notes, so, as a “this is how I do adventures” it’s not a bad read. Further, there is absolutely a place in life for people to get inspired and gain the confidence to do the thing they dread, and this could serve that purpose also. I mean, I listen to the Frutiness mix of Welcome to the Pleasuredome and get a brand, but, if you need to read about someone else doing what you want to do, good on you. Plus, his essay on meaningful plater choice is a good one, although not really covering much new ground. He does have a great bibliography in the back with only a few stinkers in it. A light read and covering a genre we could use more of: How I Do The Thing. The definitive guide is still missing on how to create an adventure. Well, until, you know what happens.

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