Nod 36 – Halfling Civil War!

Posted on May 29, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By John M. Stater
Self Published
D&D 4EVAR!

This first issue of NOD for 2021 visits a land of halflings torn by civil war, introduces you to the halfling saints, and brings you Table Top Soccer.

This 95 page magazine uses about 75 pages to describe a hex crawl in the lands of the halflings, currently waging a civil war, along with a few of the borderlands nearby. It’s a great setting, a real D&D supplement, and I have no fucking idea how to use it. 

A disclaimer: I like to think I understand how a few things work. Not just pushing the button, but understanding how the burron works, what it does, why you would do it, and the deeper implications of pushing The Big Red Button. But I don’t know SHIT about about some of my favorite things, like running sci-fi adventures and … hex crawls. I don’t understand how to run them and thus I am only conjecturing.

So, a HUGE fuckign hex map. HUGE. 74 pages of hex descriptions, four or five to a page, a paragraph or two each. That a METRIC TON of hexes to explore and of things going on in the halfling lands. Oh, and their borders, the barbarians (Fuck them! Also, I just finally got Civ6, so I’m currently in a Fuck The Barbs! mood) that prowl them, and so on. There’s so much going on that I have trouble wrapping my head around it. More on that later.

I’m starting to see some patterns in things. We’ve got halfling places, usually involved in their civil war, which comes off as mostly gentle with threats of violence. Then you’ve strongholds, places where some powerful NPC hangs out with their band of supporters. THis might be a master thief and their hobgoblin minions in the mountain complex, or the nomad barbarian encampment fishing on the river, or any of a dozen different examples. Then you’ve got the intelligent monster encounter. Cloud giants playing in a stream, hill giants charging a 5cp toll to cross a flooded area, cyclopeans working in underground caves. These can be kind of good (rough house bully cloud giants, who are still good guys) to neutral (cyclopean forgers) to bad guys (gnoll raiders) … all of whom are generally presented in a such a way that makes talking a least a possibility. You’ve also got beasts, both magical and mundane, in hexes, as well a decent number of nymph, dryad, pixie, nature spirit encounters. And you’ve also got freaky deaky shit, like an endless series of short cliffs to climb, or historical landmarks like a monolith with carvings about some historical event. And a smattering of “realistic” gonzo, like a crashed jetpack and a teleportation platform to an alien Predator ship. It’s packed full, and, I’d guess only one in six hexes is described. 

It’s fascinating. I love  it. Well, as a travelogue, like a Lonely Planet guide. As a D&D thing? Well …

I don’t know how to run a hex crawl. I’ve been collecting links on my forum for a future book on how to write and run a hex crawl, but that doesn’t mean I understand it yet. It feels like there are three ways. First, it’s an adventure. You wander from place to place, there are little hooks and things in one hex that lead to another hex. Second, it could be a setting. It’s just a place and you have “normal” adventures in it that the DM comes up with and/or inserts. The hexes are just local color for the DM to use as fodder while traveling or downtime. Third might be Wanderers, where the party literally just wanders from hex to hex getting in to trouble as the DM riffs. This last one strikes me as having even more motivational issues for players than a normal D&D party or megadungeon. Maybe there’s some other way to run a hex crawl. I don’t know.

How does Nod 36 stand in relation to these three ways? If you just want to wander, without context or continuity, then you’re ok. Have at thee. 

As an Adventure, I think this is lacking. The linkages between hexes are few and far between. There is an occasional cross-reference, but they are few and far between, not because Stater is a hack but more because there are NOT linkages. One place doesn’t really lead to another. (With a few notable exceptions, like the jetpack hex and transporter pad hex, for example. Trace the trajectory of the pack to find the pad.) Also, there’s the setting issue.

As a Setting it would be great, but you’d need to put in a lot of work, or, I would anyway, to get a really top quality experience. This would apply also to the thing as an Adventure, since the Adventure would take place in the setting. The thing lacks overview. While there is a general discussion of the history (Fascinating! And it makes sense! I’ll gush on this later) and political climate, its just general. The very first hex has a hag, mostly harmless, that is the stuff of boogyman tales in surrounding villages. But you have to read the hex to know that. And then make a note somewhere, or remember, to include it while you are running the villages. Or the barbarians and the Crazy Guy leader of one tribe, or another having a big Holy Mammoth celebration gathering.  You WANT to drop these things in to a game. To get the party going. To add context. To add continuity. Same with the civil war and whats going on. It’s written and presented as a Wanderer style, where you just trip over things.

IF you put the work in, and takes notes, and put together those things, digging through a couple of hundred hex descriptions, political trees, local color and so on, and then make a bunch of notes, flowcharts and reference sheets (of which this has none) then you would have a MAGNIFICENT setting. So much so that, if those were present, we could all have a great time buying this and running a HUGE D&D-spehere game, a shared experience for all online players. I mean it, this is a GREAT setting. Easily housing an entire campaign. If you can figure out how to use it. I’m excited and apathetic at the same time. I have a million things to do, would I ever find time to put in the work to use this? 

I doubt it. But it would be SO rewarding if I did. No, no Best or Regerts, because I don’t know what the fuck I am doing or how to review it. I REALLY like it. I just don’t know what the fuck it is or how to use it and maybe I just like it as a travelogue … which makes me nervous that I like it as a READER, something I LOATHE.

This is $4 at DriveThru. You will never find a better bargain than an issue of Nod. And it has a real cover also, with real cover art! Nice! The preview is just the first few pages though, and shows you nothing of the writing style of the hexes you’ll encounter. A page or so of them would have been nice, in order to make a buying decision of what you are actually purchasing the product for.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/351057/Nod-36?1892600

Great backstory, and short, about Powerful Ancient Elves, raising the lands to get rid of the locath, ancient towers and ruins, ild elves as the remains of religious sects and wood elves as those that found refuge in hunting lodged thousands of years ago when the elf god punished all elves. Nice Age of Magic thing without getting too detailed. Makes sense.

Posted in Reviews | 29 Comments

Dead Flood of Dwfn Eir-Gron

Posted on May 26, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Stephen Yeardley, Thilo Graf
AAW Games
5e
Levels 7-8

When a sacred dweorg festival is raided by the drow, with hundreds slain and even more enslaved, abducted, and turned into undead servitors, a deity weeps. When the divine tear becomes a flood that puts to rest the undead, the party has the chance to follow the legion of living dead on sturdy dwarven kayaks through the caverns, riding the Dead Flood of Dwfn Eir-Grøn. The undead and their drow masters are stranded, briefly, but can the party prevail against a sheer endless legion of the living dead, punish the drow and rescue the few hardy survivors that remain?

This two page adventure is actually one battle. I know, I know. So let’s talk about it. That, not this, I mean.

I remain interested in shorter adventures. I think there is a lot of potential in them. They are not overstaying their welcome and the shorter format should enforce a kind of discipline on the designer. Let us not forget that G1 was only a few pages long! Further, modern adventures flow a different way than classic OSR ones. Gone are the exploratory elements, and, therefore I assert, the longer page count that even G1 has. You should be able to, I think, create a modern “plot” adventure, with just a few encounters, in just a small handful of pages. Imagine that, a hook, investigation, and your 5 page lair dungeon all in just a few pages. Form + Function, recognizing that 5e/3e/Pathfinder are different than a OSR exploratory thing. I’m interested in such things and thus I torment myself looking in to them. 

Thus, looking at a 2-page 5e adventure, you can see how my rosey worldview worked. Decent production values, a couple of pages, sure, I can imagine a possible world in which this is a good adventure! (Wasn’t there a system of D&D where you could worship an idea rather than a god? A possible worlds paladin – In some possible world, this action is good! *smite*) 

It is not good. It is a “4e adventure.” Meaning it is not an adventure at all. It’s a fucking Warhammer game.

I fucking HATE warhammer games. If you want to play mini’s combat then go fucking play warhammer, or blah blah blah one of the fucking clones. Or make the fucking advernture for 4e, the officially recognized “i don’t want to play D&D I want to play minis combat” version of D&D. It sucks the fucking soul out of D&D. 

You’ve got this map. It’s, maybe, 20 squares by 30 squares. Underground, I guess, in caves, with a bunch of water scattered around in it, representing a river. There are five encounters. SE, SW, NE, NW, and center. Original design, isn’t it? Like, no effort at all?  You enter on kayaks on the western side, driven by dwarf commoners. Otherwise someone might have to drive the kayak and not get their AOO, or their 5’ step or whatever. At each encounter is one bad guy. They don’t help each other or interact in any way, in spite of being, I don’t know, less than 80’ from each other? You know the deal before I even write it. “I’m a 8th level drawven gravesmiter assassin with beads of force and a penchant for my description revolving entirely around my battle tactics.” There is NOTHING to this adventure EXCEPT the battlefield notes and the opponents. NOTHING. Pure fucking fantasy battle mastabutory wankfest. Mini-dungeon my ass.

The backstory is lame; I know, fluff is subjective, but, when did the drow become masters of the undead? I guess theming doesn’t mean anything anymore. You’re just looking for a villain of CR9, or whatever, and Drow came up. 

This adventure does ONE thing interesting. Every square on the map, except the water ones, every single square, has a zombie in it. Ostensibly you are trying to save them by pushing them in to the river, which is actually a flood caused by a gods tear, which acts as a gentle repose spell, which lays the (dwarf) zombie to rest, which is the goal of mission, to “save” as many dwarves as possible. I mean, it’s Warhammer, but it is an interesting battlefield thing. 

It took two people to write this thing. Instead of a long backstory, instead of a quarter page of artwork, but not write an actual adventure? Why advertise it as an adventure when you could advertise it as “four hours of nonstop hacking zombie action in the style of your least favorite 4e adventures!” 

Oh, and that river, the one that acts as a gentle response spell? That, my friends, is a classic example of “explaining why.” It’s a gods tear, you don’t need to have a book fucking explanation for why. It kills the magic. It kills the mystery of it all. Wonder is no more. Another example has the drow using three different book poisons on the dwarves, so as to, I assumer per game rules, give them all three levels of exhaustion. I fucking hate this book shit. Infinite possibilities and and we get a 4e battle with book explanation for wondrous things.

This is $1 at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/356560/5E-MiniDungeon-197-Dead-Flood-of-Dwfn-EirGron?1892600

Speaking of DriveThru, let’s look at how much life sucks by examining the Rule Systems=OSR, Product Type= NonCore, Adventures. 

Adventure of the Week – Just a plot hook, it looks like.

Dead Girls in Sarkash Forest – Emmy Allen thing. Looks like a digest procedural thing, and, being for Mork Borg, has the required “I used an “interesting” giant font. I may end up reviewing this.

Geppetto’s Folly – A filbar thing, so, you know, not going to be good.

Casa Matildo – In spanish. Good for them. But not fodder for me.

Some one page dungeon, but in Russian.

MAPS YOUR PARTY WILL DIE FOR 2 – I assume not actually an adventure

Dungeon Crawl Solo – Ug. Solo.

Another Voxelhouse in Spanish. I might have to learn spanish. HOLA. BUEON GIORNO

“Adventure of the week”, one in French and one in ENglish, both just plot ideas.

Some kind of zine, collected from someones blog

Zero level players guide from Starry Knight. Bun me 293 times, shame on you

A one page Mork Borg adventure

14 Zweihander “adventures.”

So, maybe, one thing to look at, the Emmy Allen thing. And this is a good week. 90% of “adventures” are not actually adventures and 90% of the ones that are are total crap.

Posted in 5e, Reviews | 20 Comments

Trash Planet Epsilon 5

Posted on May 24, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Olobosk
Swordfish Islands
Electric Bastionland-like thing
RPG/Adventure/One shot

Is a random word generator likely to produce as good a play as Hamlet?. 

A trash planet. A sphere of coagulated space junk. Layers upon layers of generational garbage piled up on itself thousands of times over. Rumours run wild around the nearby sectors and beyond that invaluable treasures lie beneath the trash heaps of Epsilon 5.

This 28 page thing is both an RPG and an set of rules to procedurally generate an adventure environment. If you can accept “procedurally generated” then it does a decent job. I cannot, and therefore his review will almost immediately go off on a tangent.

It’s a floating ball of trash the size of a planet, with corp cargo ships dropping off more all the time. There are simple RPG mechanics attached (based on Electric Bastionland, the product says) and a few pages devoted to procedurally generating an adventure environment, with 24 locations and some treasures and creatures, for the pregens to explore. 

There’s a location naame, a few evocative words, and then a sentence or two of DM notes. So, for Acid Lake we get (formatting removed): Bubbling, Glowing Green-Yellow, Smells Sour Flotsam rafts of jumbled junk drift on the surface. d4 DAMAGE per turn to any organic matter submerged within. We’ll roll a creature and a treasure and then it’s up to the DM to make something of it. Monsters are suitably described, so, for the Virtual Shades we get “Neon blue, two-dimensional amorphous hologram, flickering and distorting as it moves.” Again, a decent description, focusing not on their backstory but on how the party will interact and experience when they encounter them. Which is what the fuck a monster description should the fuck do. Ok, and there’s a single Neo-Rose as a treasure “A genetic accident, suited only to growing in the unique trash riddled soil of EPSILON 5. Its pungent odour, reminiscent of rose and paint stripper, never fades even when picked.” So, as a DM, maybe, there’s this acid lake and some rickety platforms on it and the party sees the middle one has this single neo-rose on it and the lake is full of these Victorian holograms out boating. Oops, I’m getting ahead of myself. The locations take up three pages, the creatures about four, and about the same for the treasure. The restis a map, location tracker, die drop thingy (*sigh*) and some basic mechanics/rules. The takeaway here is that the creature descriptions, and variety, is good (although a little swede to the robot/mechanical side of things, ala Tomb Adventures being one-note stuffed full of undead.) The location descriptions vary from pretty interesting (a village made up of clones of one woman! Acid Lake!) to Mega-corp shipwreck and dirtyy needle dumping ground. Which offer less of an environment to explore and more “here is hazard while you having a fight” sort of location, out of 4e. 

And now, we necessarily diverge in to our tangent: the convention game. The One shot. From OSR convention competition adventures to the CoC one shot to things like these, unique little games with little adventures attached. This is a genre unto itself. Sure, you can turn it in to a campaign, but its not really suited for that.  Sure, it could be used as a night or two of adventuring for a Traveller game or some such. But it will suffer from the same problems.

For both, I find the adventure lacking. 

There’s really a lack of motivation here. It’s just a place to dive for trash treasure, with little holding the adventure together beyond that. I’m not saying it needs a plot, but there is nothing really here other than the procedurally generated stuff, and that hits the same nerve that many people complain about megadungeon play: why? Because it’s what we’re doing tonight, do you want to play or not? IE: you need a motivation for your character. But, in these one-shot and/or convention games, you need more than that. Or, rather, more than that helps a lot. I mean, I’m still there to waste four hours having fun, but a little assist from the designer, beyond the pregens, helps. You need something to kick things off, or a goal, and that’s just not present.

And then of course there’s the fact that it’s procedurally generated. I don’t know who started this trend. It needs to stop. Procedurally generated dungeons don’t work. They cannot wor, by their very definition. There is no way that you can have a satisfying experience RIGHT NOW AT THE TABLE with some ad-hoc dice rolls, at least in comparison to an adventure location that has been designed, agonized over, and fits in well with the surrounding location, all thanks to the designer. Is this just emulation of what others have done? Are people afraid of actually designing a room/dungeon? I mean, what if the designer had rolled on their own tables, taken inspiration from the results, and then crafted the results, after hours of work, in to a more coherent experience? Do you really want to assert that would not be the better play experience? 

What’s the downside? It’s not random? So what. It’s a one-shot fucking around game. A location that is likely to never be revisited again, either in a campaign or as a one short fucking around game or at a convention. Why the fuck do you care about it being an adventure generator? Why not make something really good instead? Because, of course, an adventure is different than “a tool to help inspire you to write your own adventure.” Why … we’re not saying that’s what this is, are we? That would mean it has misrepresented itself, and we all know how I feel about being cheated. 

So, ok writing, good monsters. As an idea generator it may be ok. As an adventure I think it fails at its “most likely to be a one shot” genre experience. Or, rather, succeeds more than the usual procedural adventures do but still fails in the quality of the overall experience. 

This is $5 at itch.

https://olobosk.itch.io/trashplanetepsilon5

Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments

Castle Roan

Posted on May 22, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Chantel Jones
Self Published
OSRIC 
Levels 1-3

In this adventure, the heroes face a group of Daragons to save the Kind and his family! [sp]

This 23 page adventure features a three level (plus basement!) dungeon with about seventy rooms. It’s minimally-keyed, and shows a shocking lack of care, to a degree that is new even to me. It’s in the running for the worst I’ve ever reviewed.

What if I open a restaurant. In the back I microwave frozen burritos that I buy for 30 cents each from ALDI. I don’t do this because I am trolling. I do this because I think that this is good food and it’s how you run a restaurant. As a stranger, you come in and order a burrito. It is as you would except given its a 30 cent microwave burrito from ALDI. That I charge $10 for. What is the social contract between you and I? As a friend/family, we might be supportive. As a stranger, what are your obligations to me, both directly when speaking to me and indirectly when talk to another about your experience in Sheboygan Japanese Cuisine, which features microwaved burritos from ALDI? Asking for a friend … 

There is a seemingly lack of care to this adventure which is bad enough that I thought this might be an art project. Note the misspellings in the publisher’s blurb. “The heros” and “Daragons” and “the Kind”. (that’s the king, and dragons.) The pregen characters spread across multiple pages, as it page breaks were inserted randomly, some starting on the same page another ends on, thus complicating printing them out to hand out to players. The stat blocks are walls of text, with weird indents. Randomly scattered through the text, and I do mean randomly, there are paragraphs of monsters labeled “Encounter 1”, with a stat block for, say 28 goblins. Just here and there, insperspaced between the room encounters which are labeled “room 1” “room 2” and so on. Not to worry though, the actual stats blocks are missing for some creatures. Two column text from word perfect just drifts on to a new page instead of being formatted in to something decent. 

Challenge wise, this adventure for levels 1-3, we get encounters with kobolds, goblins, elves, a room with 100 skeletons, a  6HD weretiger, a 10HD hydra, and a room with a 7HD white dragon, a 10HD blue dragon and an 11HD red dragon. You and me both buddy; I certainly have no fucking clue, especially given you need the rod in that room to save the Kind and his family. 

It’s minimally keyed. “This room is empty.” or “Giant Rats, No Appearing:15 (stat block)” or “This is the throne room.” That’s it. Those are your descriptions. “On the south of the room are a bed and two nightstands.” Minimal keyed. Laundry list contents not related to the adventure. Interactivity like a room with fifteen pools each of which does something ala B1. Rooms stuffed full of treasure, coin and especially high level magic items. And no, nothing is gong to stave off that weretiger, hydra, or dragons, so don’t get any ideas that it is on purpose.

This may come as a shocking surprise, but I would never want to discourage anyone from writing an adventure. You have to write to get better. My angst stems from my entitlement issues, and expectations. (Hmmm, can you have entitlement issues as a consumer, or is that not allowed and/or encouraged as a consumer in a market economy?) But Jesus H Fucking Christ man, don’t you, as a producer, have some obligation to the rest of us to produce something that you actually give a fucking shit about? Don’t you have some social obligation to the rest of us suckers to know what the fuck a restaurant actually is before you open one? 

This could be a product from the early days of gaming. A map, filling all spaces with weird mazes and such like that famous Greyhawk map photo. Minimally keyed encounters ala Vampire Queen. A typesetting nightmare like Walking Wet and other manually set adventure products. 

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages. Go stare in to the abyss for a bit by looking at it.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/355163/Castle-Roan?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews, The Worst EVAR? | 28 Comments

Wizard’s Vengeance

Posted on May 19, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Filip Gruszcyzynski
Self Published
LotFP/OSE
All Levels

The wizard is dead – burnt at the stake by a menacing witch hunter. His tower is unguarded and ripe for plunder. Gold, artifacts and magic can be yours, if you act swiftly. But will you be able to get away with the loot? For even in death the wizard will exact his vengeance!

This 36 page adventure describes a wizards tower with ten levels and 25 rooms. A slower adventure, and quite similar to Tower of the Stargazer in its pacing. It feels less dry than Stargazer but still suffers, I think, from the “Tower is Empty” issue. Lower levels will do a hit and run loot job while higher levels will clear the place, hence the “All Levels” range. I think that’s pretty interesting; particularly completing an adventure.

Local wizard gets himself burned at the stake and the party stumble upon it right after it has happened. The pyre is still smoldering and the witch hunter is going to the dudes tower in the morning to burn it as well. Until then .. there’s no one at home and the tower is no doubt, stuffed full of loot. 

The adventure has two timers and that’s the first one. If you can get out of the tower before the (8th level cleric) witchhunter and her minions arrive you get to keep all the loot. If not then you get to keep only the monetary loot and not the magical stuff, it being heretical. Or, she just burns you and you get to keep nothing. The “short window of opportunity” is a classic of adventure design, be it looting a manor lords home, a wizards tower, so Speculos’s Lair. There’s a second timer as well: the wizard laid a curse, as all good witches do when being burnt at the stake. Every hour all the animals in a circle around the tower die and come back as undead, humans excepted, doubling each hour until it reaches 32 kilometers. (There’s a helpful regional map showing areas of interest, as well as a handy dandy “what happens after the adventure” to help the DM run the after effects on the local towns, etc.) The party MIGHT know this beforehand, but it’s unlikely. Only the mayor knows, of those outside of the tower. So while this MIGHT be a second timer, it’s actually more of a plot device. There’s a devil inside in a magic circle, if someone willingly sacrifices themselves to it then the curse it lifted. Oh, also, if you sacrifice an unwilling person to it then you gain 1000xp each time. 

Holy fuck. That’s a situation! You can use it to bargain with the witch hunter, and she will sacrifice herself to stop the undead plague. You can go all evil and sacrifice people to get your XP. It’s fucking brilliant! Good setup, and, more than just treasure, it can drive action and is a temptation for the party to boot! A nicely done gizmo.

This is certainly one of the better parts of the adventure but there is a certain design aesthetic being followed that is above average. In one instance there’s a hallway with an electrified floor, blocking access to other rooms. If you look around the corner of the doorway in to the hallway then you can see a pile of dead rats at the end … giving you a clue that something is amiss in the hallway. A decent trap, a decent clue, and a decent “normal” situation to present to a party. Altogether good design. There are a few other interesting situations as well, such as playing a chess game with what turns out to be a devil (classic devil stuff!), a library of books, balconies to climb up on to, and NPC’s to free in the cells below. 

There’s also a sly little humor added to the text which appeals to me a great deal. “[the wizard]  realized early on that sooner or later some of the common folks might come up with a catchy slogan like “Burn the witch!”” or a rumor that he organizes orgies with demons of both sexes … unfortunately untrue, the rumor table tells us. And even the devil who is pleasantly and cordial, while trapped in his summoning circle, to any adventurers he meets — no point discouraging potential customers, the text tells us. These are excellent little touches that, while directed more as commentary to the DM, also serve to add a certain framing the text, one for the DM to then leverage and bring even more to life. They are never more than a word or two (unfortunately untrue, no point in discouraging potential customers, etc) and don’t show up excessively in the adventure. Well done framing to the DM disguised as commentary to the DM.

The town NPC’s, the mayor, priest and barkeep (IE: just the most common people the party is likely to interact with) are decently done, and shorty, with a personal quirk to bring them home to the DM to roleplay. Likewise the NPC’s in the adventure, from a servant who nervously cleans things as a coping mechanism, to traumatized captives who heard a cellmate being devoured alive by undead rats. 

Magical items are suitable unique, like a portrait with the wizards name written on the back. If you write YOUR name on the back then YOU get to use the magic portrait to look through its eyes. Looking through a pictures eyes is a classic, and Writing Your Name clearly has historical symbolism. This is good use of that deep cultural innate knowing that we all have.

A few notes …

In several places in the tower we learn that someone does something when they hear something in a different room. For example, I am in a room and there is an antechamber. If you make noise in the anterchamber then I call out. Should that fact be in the antechamber or in my room? I think it should be be in the room where the effect happens, the antechamber. This adventure puts that information in the NPCs rooms … which is usually then missed by the DM.

The map has about two tower floors per page, in the center, and then some columns on either side with room summaries. This is a nice approach (as if all of the formatting decisions mad ein the adventure; nothing particularly special but very usable) but the descriptions tend to be quite short and lacking flavor. They are meant to kep the DM to what the encounter is. There is A LOT of extra whitespace available and i think it could have been used better to bring more to those short little description than they do. Why leave the extra space just hanging out?

There’s a LOTFP Fuck You here and there, like catching the 90% death bubonic plague in one room, with a save every turn you spend in the room. That’s not telegraphed very well. I’m not strictly opposed to this since there’s a book that describes infection disease research in the room, but, it is tending to a direction I don’t like. 

The descriptions themselves, of both the rooms and the creatures, could be a lot better. It’s not that they are bad. They are not overly long, or flowery, or Try Harding. They are not even particularly bland (with notable exceptions.) They just are not spectacular. I’m a firm believer that a decent adventure (defined as : I don’t want to stab my eyes out and fill me with ennui) can be made by just about anyone by following a few simple rules. The hardest part to get over the Decent hump in to Good territory is knowledge of design through interesting situations, etc, and evocative writing. The writing, particular, is a learned skill and hard work. If there’s a formula to it I don’t know it. The creature descriptions and the rooms both suffer from this, the creature descriptions more so. 

So, ok little adventure. A little on the slow side, as Stargazer was, but with more going on than in Stargazer 

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages and shows you a few rooms. More than enough information to get a good feel for the adventure, so a good preview.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/356588/Wizards-Vengeance?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | 18 Comments

The Mad Alchemist

Posted on May 17, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Valleria Studios
Valleria Studios
5e
Level 6

Oakheart, a once vital trading post, has been struck by a mysterious disease. Over the past month, Lord Ulric Von Vymarc, townmaster of Oakheart, has set out his men to look for the source of the disease and a cure to put a stop to the disaster. Yet they’ve failed to find any clue to what this might be. As the weeks passed, more people got infected to the point where most of the shops had to close. The town’s guard is undermanned as they’re falling ill themselves.Ships are starting to avoid the town, as rumors about a disease are starting to spread. More importantly, The Feast Of The Stars is approaching. This would be a major source of income for the people, as many from all over the land come here to pay their respects to the gods, feast and spend many of their valuables.  The town is already accommodating the first of many visitors to come. Yet most of them leave once they find out about Oakheart’s situation. Lord Ulric has sent out letters to renowned adventurers across Valleria to assist in this serious matter.

This 28 page adventure details a short little investigation in to a virus(!) and about eighteen rooms in the mad alchemist’s lair. It has some sparks of interesting encounters when it comes to the creatures, although the puzzles are a bit on the nose for my tastes. Still, for what it is it’s an above average adventure that shops promise, particularly in regard to creativity and formatting.

I was full prepared to hate this. $17 for a PDF is the reason I picked it up. Then, it’s got the generic title. The generic trope of an alchemist as an enemy. It’s 5e, and then there’s the trade dress. None of these give a favorable first impression. Generic background, generic “you can adapt this to your world!” information, padding to page six, and, at a quick glance, read-aloud that tends to three-four paragraphs long talking up a quarter to two-thirds of a page. These are all the symptoms of a bad adventure. And yet … it’s not really. Plus, there’s enough going on here to actually write a real review for a change

This is a virus adventure, with people in the town getting sick. I’m surprised that, given the pandemic, we’ve not seen more of these. You’re hired by courier, taking a ten day boat trip to the plague town to meet with the Lord Mayor. The ‘hired’ trope is not particularly well done, although there is a full page “fancy font” letter you can hand out. I love those. Props are a lost art and letter handouts are one of the last remaining. Anyway, it’s a little easy to get a plague town, breaking the immersion a bit and, most of all, a lost opportunity for some roleplaying efforts and scenes to set a mood. The “hired by the town” trope is boring as well, especially when just a hand wave as it is here. But, whatever, we’re playing D&D tonight. (And, I will leave unmentioned, the fact that the party arrives by ship in ten days and later walks only half a day to find the cause of the infection. Ug! Immersion again!)

It is, at this point, that things start to get better. A check-in line at the town, a sickly gnome at a desk wearing a mask, coughing in to it. A tavern with a sign that has a cat head sticking out of a caldron “The Boiled Cat.” Things are starting to look up! Further, the innkeep has a nice section called “What the innkeeper knows” laid out in an offset box with bullets. Nice! This trend continues for others people that the party are likely to talk to, at least within the bounds of the investigation play.

Let’s return, though, to The Boiled Cat. This simple thing, the naming of a tavern, is a degree of interesting content that is not usually seen in adventures, let alone 5e adventures. Not generic. It’s specific and not abstracted. This continues in other areas of the adventure. A delivery boy brings you supplies that you request, and he might keep some of it or charge more, etc, because his family is hurting. Again, an interesting interaction that can lead to more, either sympathy or annoyance with the boy. A young guard, Tim, worried about supporting his family, wanting work, wanting to not get sick or get them sick, torn between these things. This is not your usual generic shit, and, I think, works well because it effectively channels real world things in a way that still makes the game fun. It makes sense AND adds to experience in a fun way. The party can relate. 

The dungeon encounters are likewise interesting. Gibbering Mouthers as a failed experiment? Perfect! And they slither under doors! Even better, a fresh take! A grey ooze that looks like a rock. A treasure chest in a cell … that turns out to be a mimic. These all make sense as failed experiments, they surprise and delight and, for whatever reason, they are interesting takes on them. The party hearing a “slosh slosh” as a mouther stalks them on the ceiling. Specificity. Brief points of which shine like binding light in bringing an adventure to life. A flesh golem shoults “Freeeedoooommmm!” Every time it attacks. Great thing added to the encounter, you can imagine a tortured soul doing that. Also, it’s a clue that “Liberty” is the answer to the puzzle lock in the next room. Clever monkey. That’s good design. 

There are substantial downsides though.

I mentioned the long read-aloud, never a good thing. A substantial amount of information is communicated through diaries. This is almost always a bad decision, an easy crutch. THings are better when they are communicated more naturally, and, no, I don’t mean through the villain monologue. There should be more than enough possabilities, in an eighteen room lair, to get across the points made in the diaries. 

The plague is not very visceral. Like I said, its easy to get to town. There are not a lot of plague vignettes. There should be some cross-references, both from the lord mayor and the innkeeper, for plague information, so the DM can find that information easily when the party inevitable asks about it. Some of the plague victims in the infirmary have different symptoms than others. This would normally lead to follow up investigations for them … which are not provided at all. No, you get everything you need from the mayor int he first meeting. “My alchimist friend disappeared on Blood Cove a few days ago.” Uh huh. That’s the next step, allowing the party to skip the infirmary altogether. The town, the plague, the infirmary, they are all non-existent as far as the adventure is concerned, which is too bad, a serious lost opportunity. And only a Greater Restoration spell can cure people. There goes all the benefits of living in a magical ren faire world. 

The puzzles in the dungeon, though, are a low point. These are all pretty on the nose. A combination lock made of letters, level puzzle, and so on. The clues, likewise, are on the nose, with bits of paper left around with things like “CIRCLE = GOOD GOOD GOOD” and so on. Yeah, it serves a purpose, but its also about the easiest way possible to relate the clue and they show none of the creativity, either in the puzzle or the clues, tha the better encounters and NPC do. 

To finish up I’ll saw that the map tries to be artistic and it fails at that. Maps are hard, I get it. A simpler map would have been clearer. Or, at least a different color choice for the backgrounds which reproduce more clearly. There is a cute little art piece, masquerading as a town map, that I think gives the town a nice vibe though. It’s numbers, but I think it’s more art than map, unlike the lair proper. 

Not a bad effort for someone with no credits to their name! I’d run this before I ran a lot of other things, $17 or no.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $17. You can grab the entire things, obviously, but the preview is 20 pages also, giving you a good idea of what you are about to purchase.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/356433/The-Mad-Alchemist?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 10 Comments

The Valley of the Lost

Posted on May 15, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Allen Farr
Winterblight's Challenge
Generic/Universal/OSR
A Weariness in Soul

Seemingly created by mad gods, the Valley of the Lost has been reshaped as if all creation has been allowed to run amok. Will you succumb to the toxicity of the Path of Madness or meet your end in the darkness of the Path of Shadows? Perhaps the guardians of the Path of Light will be your undoing or will you wander endlessly on the Path of the Lost until you meet your demise? These are the dangers that must be endured to reach the Ascent of Kings and discover the Valley of the Lost.

I’m on a roll baby! 

This eleven page thing is nothing. It’s a setting guide, with little specifics, for a tv show. It’s a work of fiction aimed at a DM, to inspire them to create a game to run. It’s masquerading as an adventure, with a hex map, when it is, in fact, just an idea. “You could do something having to with many worlds.” ARG!

I find products like this frustrating. One the one hand, there is certainly a role for fluff books, books which inspire the DM or detail a background, or some such that a DM can expand upon. On the other hand, I seldom wan any fucking thing to do with them, especially when I’m looking for “an adventure.” The hex map here might fool you … there is no adventure here and it’s just generalized background and a few ideas. “There could be dinosaur people. You should make your own.”

There’s a long backstory about an evil wizard and summoning a nexus of worlds. This has almost nothing to do with this location. Any “possible worlds” isn’t really handled at all. I guess you could use it as an explanation for the various magical effects in the valley, but this ain’t Rifts, our Incredible Journey or anything like that. The only possible worlds is the background mentioning “a nexus of possible worlds.” And that’s the problem with this entire product.

It says things and doesn’t follow through. There could be dinosaur people and they should have different unique attacks. Go create them.” Uh … ok. It’s a nexus of worlds … with nothing related to a nexus of worlds. It has a pretty nice hex map full of features, icons, and the like. With no legend, disnace markings and NONE of the features detailed. Just little red dots on the maps. Not even a one sentence of them. Nothing. It’s like the map doesn’t exist at all for the purposes of the products.

Which isn’t exactly true. There are a number of passes in to the valley. “The path of Light/Darkness/Madness/Lost.” Each has some special effect and is shown on the map as a lightly fitted line. “You go could go mad on the paths of madness. The party should roll a save and the DM should come up with a suitable madness.” This is the extent of the detail in the adventure.

Like I said, I guess if you wanted fluff you could buy this. There’s even a product category on DriveThru called “Setting Guides.” Note that this is a completely separate category than “Adventures.” 

I’m so sick of this shit. 

“The GM should use the Places of Creation to come up with unique creatures, or even have the player characters undergo some kind of transition, perhaps gaining a new power or some deformity that hinders them.”

At one point there’s a page of gothic bold font, representing a journal entry, to describe a location. It is hard to read, meant only for the DM to inspire them. This is indicative of the entire product. A complete misunderstanding of what it should be doing. 

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview, of course, doesn’t work.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/355743/Valley-Of-The-Lost?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews, The Worst EVAR? | 7 Comments

The Plebeian #1 – The Lost Necklace

Posted on May 12, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
Tony Garcia
Voxelhouse
B/X
Levels 2-4

Rumors that a necklace with magical powers was stolen by a group of thieves and taken to the sewers of Crinsomwater. Brother Frederick of the Order of Worshipers of Transformed Lead is giving 400 gold pieces to recover this artifact.

This is the first issue of a bi-weekly (!) seven page zine, which uses six pages to describe an adventure: The Lost Necklace. It has eleven rooms in a sewer system and uses two pages to describe them. “Describe” being used in a loose manner of the word. Lacking meaningful content, this is a “get the red key to open the red door” adventure.

You got the picture from the intro: magic necklace stone. Party hired to go to the sewers to find it.

The town here has 920 residents, fourteen towers and a rather extensive city sewer system, since the eleven rooms here are in the sewers and are described as just a small part of them. And by “sewer system” I mean “a couple of descriptions mention the smell of shit but otherwise they are just normal old dungeon rooms.” A depressingly large number of rooms, almost half?, contain the line “roll for a random encounter in this room”, just as a nother room states that there are 1d6 zombies and another states to roll for a random treasure.

I have to ask: why do this? What value does a random roll add to the adventure? In the case of a wandering monster its obvious: this is a push your luck mechanic. Some items might have a random effect, that makes sense also. But why make a static encounter random? Why not, as a designer, create a treasure to be placed in the dungeon instead of relying on a roll on a book table? Isn’t that what we’re paying for, the designers creativity? The improper usage of randomness in old school adventures is an article tat needs to be written. I’ll make a mental note to do it and promptly forget.

The adventure is padded out. “If the group decides to attack then combat must be started, the adventure tells us. Well, yes, that is how things work. “You can investigate this room or continue through the door”, the read-aloud tells us in many of the rooms. Well, again, yes, that is how D&D works. These sorts of things just pad out the word count of an adventure, or, more precisely, steal words that could otherwise contribute to an evocative adventure. The adventure, of course has the obligatory paragraph of “This is set in our game world but as the DM you can adapt it your game world.” I should hope this is obvious to everyone. Again, empty content that could be used for ADVENTURE! How much effort was spent on these parts, the padding, the de rigueur, the randomness, when that effort could have been spent on the actual adventure?

In the sewers you come to a door with a skull lock. You need to find the skull key to open the skull lock and find the cross key to open the cross lock, later.*sigh*. Find the red key for the red door was a trope from long ago computer rpg’s. Actually, this feels more like a choose your own adventure, but whatever. It’s extremely simplistic design. We never do find out what the magic necklace does that you are sent to get; its just referred to as a magic necklace. 

The town is called Crimsonwater. This is because when it rains the ground looks like blood, thanks to the mud. THIS is a good detail. It’s not just dropped in the bs backstory/background and not emphasized through play in any way, at least not in a way that te DM could integrate it well, but this is the kind of specificity that brings an adventure to life. 

It is the sole example.

Keeping up any kind of publishing schedule every other week is going to be a full time job. I wish the designers well; if they can do it then they should let me know how so I can also.

This review is now being cut short because Prince Vultan, who is never more than a foot away from me all day every day, is incessantly pawing at my leg, telling me it’s time to pet him and brush him.  How can ignore someone telling them to love them?

This is Pay What You Want at Drivethru with a suggested price of $1. The preview shows you the entire adventure, so it’s a good preview, telling you exactly the type of content you’ll be getting so you can know before you buy.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/355803/The-Plebeian-number-1?1892600

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

A Wintry Death

Posted on May 10, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
Jason Duff
Earl of Fife Games
OSE/BX
What's a level?

Our stores were empty and game was scarce. We pushed out further and further to find anything to fill our bellies. My family was starving and I knew it would not be long before the end. I hope I am not too late.

This 25 page adventure presents six VERY short scenes for the PC’s to encounter in the snow. The lack of actual content serves to demonstrate why we can’t have nice things.

I was reading about a guy who was visiting Zimbabwe. Everyone was super happy, in spite of the deteriorating state of things. Someone explained it to him: in Zimbabwe you don’t expect to find butter in the grocery store. When you do find it, you’re very happy. In the developed world you expect butter in the grocery store, so when you don’t find it you are unhappy. All I want is, to all day long, walk about enchanted, in ecstasy, like the gods I saw dancing in my dreams. Which model to you think _I_ fall in to?

There are six winter themed scenarios in this, and I use the term ‘scenario’ loosely. Maybe you cross a frozen lake and there are some fish in the lake that break through the ice to attack you. That’s one. It takes two pages. Another is that maybe you are caught in an avalanche; make a DEX check to avoid it. Again, another couple of pages. Or, you camp someplace and a Yet is there also. A couple of pages. I think you get where I’m going with this. What if every room in the kobolds lair in Borderlands were two pages long and didn’t really have any more content than they already do in B2? Ta da! Download burn it and ship it to Kansas and clean up with that filthy lucre!

This stuff takes place in “The Forever Winter” which sounds cool but isn’t really explored at all except for a couple of environmental rules. Each “scene” starts with four or five italics paragraphs, for the DM, to set the mood, kind of in a “characters journal” kind of voice. Meh. It does nothing. In one of the lengthier scenes, in a town, we are told “At least one person had survived this place and got out alive. The GM should consider who it might have been” … even though this has absolutely no bearing on the adventure at all. 

Design is terrible, with forced things all over place. “Make an int check to know what the undead dude said. If you fail and try to leave then you will get attacked. Too bad for not understanding the language and answering the riddle he is asking you.” Or you are “attacked” by red mist when leaving town. Make a DEX roll or take damage. Gee! Fun! 

A spectre comes from the rafters in a church. “These are some sort of insects have hid here and have been eating the interior wood.” I have no idea what that means. The spectrers are insects? Or they have been eating the rafters like insects? Again, it has no impact, so I’m confused. 

“Those that do not understand what is being said.” one of the complete sentences in the adventure tells us. Yeah. No shit. That’s why we use editors. Oh, wait, there was an editor on this. I have no idea.

How do you review something like this? How do you review an “Adventure” where the simplest thing takes two pages. When there is no meaningful content, and it’s just abstracted ideas, concepts that the DM might expand on, with no real assistance to the DM to do so? 

The grocery is out of butter again. In spite of knowing better, I still can’t get used to it.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages. You can see the “crossing the lake” encounter at the end of it, as well as the start of one of the longer scenes, the village. They represent the design and writing perfectly, so, good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/352209/A-Wintry-Death–Adventure-for-OldSchool-Essentials?1892600

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

She who is a fortress in Dark Water, adventure review

Posted on May 8, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Phillip Loe
Chaptain Ahab's Leg
OSR
Levels 5-10

Persevering through years of sweat and failure, Mother Cordelia Giovanni of the Ignacian Monastic Order finally succeeded in her great work—the creation of a human baby whose spine, once the baby matured to adulthood, could open the lock of the massive black codex said to have been written by St. Ignacio himself in the age of mysteries.

This sixteen page adventure details an eighteen room temple full of lizardpeople and another eight or locations in the wilderness. There’s a kind of energy wrapped up in many of th encounters, inside and outside the temple, that speak to the creativity of the designer and good writing. It’s marred by several minor issues that most people would overlook but annoy the fuck out out of me because I can see th epotential in the adventure without them.

“Show, don’t tell” is common writing advice and “I grew a baby to extract its spine to use as a key” is a pretty fucking good job at showing rather than telling the nature of ol Mother Cordelia. The baby was given to a monk who is raising him in a village, to get him away from her, and she now lives in the swamps nearby, the local crazy wise woman. The party stumbles upon the village, burning, after a raid, the monk dying the church. Seems the boy was stolen by lizardmen.

Here there be commentary from yours. This is a fairly good intro. What the village is lacking is a sentence or two on the destruction, to bring it home viscerally to the party. It DOES have some dead villagers with “oiltoads” still in their mouths. (They charm you to make you eat them, they being poison, you die. Pretty fucking sweet monster and visuals!) Further, the adventure has a timer, 24 hours. After that a DIFFERENT crazy dude extracts the boys spine and uses it as a key to summon The Evil One (She who is a fortress in Dark Water, in this case.) But you don’t know there’s a timer. Timers like this generally work best when the party knows they are on one. These things are missing from the village, although, it does mention that from the highest points  in the village you can see a couple of things in the pointcrawl swamp thats the next step. That’s good design!

The wanderers both in the swamps and dungeon are good, if a little too frequent. One check every turn in the temple and one every 15 minutes in the swamp (it’s a pointcrawl, so one check every “move” to a new location.) A pit extreme for an OSR limited resources game, I think. Then again at level 10 … 10, is that right? That’s pretty fucking powerful in B/X. 

Treasure is a mixed bag, speaking of levels. The loot here is pretty non-existent, even for a group of level 1’s. Magic items range from +1 swords to a pair of toad statues that turn to life when you squeeze them and spit poison for you, etc. This is very strange to me. On the one hand you’ve got these great magic items, clearly unique, not really described in mechanical terms at all. And then you’ve got just generic book treasure thrown in (maybe more book than unique, not a lot of either for the level range.) The designer clearly has the ability to make interesting treasure, they should have followed through on that.

OOB for the main temple full of ilzardmen is lacking, except for a brief note about the guards outside. The map is CLOSE to being illegible. It’s hand drawn, which I’m fine with, but then artistic flairs are added, which reduces legability, as do the rather small and thick penciled number keying. And there are no windows on the map, in spire of one room having a giant window being its main feature. There’s not overview of the temple from the outside, what it looks like, beyond “The temple was once a magnificent testament to the god of the marshland, a god of death, purification, and rebirth. Neglect has turned it into a ruin.” This is a great example of a worthless description. It says nothing meaningful for the game at hand. There’s a guard tower, that you have to dig for to find and remember as the party approaches, not obvious at all.

Further rooms sometimes lead with the wrong information, like saying there’s a broken alter in a room whos walls are covered by giant red tick marks. The boy, strapped in to a machine that is extracting his spine, is not really mentioned at all beyond those words, or how to get him out of the machine, etc, except that in doing so you will probably kill him. 

And yet, this will receive a No Regerts. Because it IS creative.

Those frogs statues for example. Or white pillar emerging from a brackish pool in the swamp, the spawning ground of the oil toads! With a mummified body in the water at the base of the pillar, his face having the same features as the oiltoads … and having teethe that have turned to diamonds! The counting room, with its tick marks crude on the walls. Or, pit traps outside the village, dug by the lizardpeople to keep the villagers from escaping … a few of which have villagers in them, impaled on spikes. One of which is still alive with a broken foot, willing to lend a hand as they can. A giant stained glass window with light streaming through it that deals damage to the non pure of heart. A room nearby with a heavy cloak in it. A mural elsewhere in the temple showing an offering being made under the window. A hint! This is interactivity. This is design. The offering is made under the window, in the mural, but needs to be made at the alter in the (essentially) same room, so it’s not even spoon feeding the party. 

Creativity abounds in this effort. It just needs more of it, as well as some adjustments to real world running the adventure by someone who didn’t run it. Things, like the start in the village, are clumsy, overlooked, out of order, and so on. But there’s some good stuff in this. Smarter than your average bear Boo Boo.

This is free at the designers blog:

https://captainahabsleg.blogspot.com/2021/04/she-who-is-fortress-in-dark-water.html

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