tenfootpole.org

By Aaron Gustwiller
Aaron's Gaming Stuff
S&W
Levels 1-3

[…] After the fire, the ruins gained a reputation an evil and cursed place, following the disappearance of several people in the nearby forest and a small group of adventurers that went to explore the site. But even though this reputation keeps people away, there is still much talk about what treasures may be hidden away in the catacombs beneath the ruins

This twelve page adventure uses about six pages to describe a two level dungeon with about 75 rooms. As the room count would indicate, it is pretty aggressively minimalistic, with faint hints of interesting situations that never really play out. 

There’s not much to go on here. This is just a site based adventure, two dungeon levels of a ruined monastery. We’re just told that there are ruins with an evil reputation and told that there are two entrances, one to the crypts and one to the catacombs. So, two levels and not a two-level dungeon. Beyond this, we’re on our own for a framing. This is, I think, fine. It’s a site, it’s a dungeon, off we go. I am more than a bit disappointed  by the environs around the dungeon, just getting a sentence or two description. This is nothing more, really, than just two isolated maps that have been keyed and little framing beyond that.

The maps are by Hartin, and are reasonable. Some small loops on the first one, the Crypts, and on the Catacombs more of a star design from a central room, in layout if not in practice, with a tendency for the dungeon, I think to play out in a more linear form. You go north and keep going north until you can’t anymore. They look pretty and there’s an interesting feature or two, but the core construction is not the greatest, I think. I’m exaggerating when I saw this, but you travel down a long hallway with doors to either side. It’s a little too linear and a little too … isolated because of the central hub design.

The core problem with this is in the room descriptions. While I usually go on and on about adventures with high page counts and a low number of encounters, there is also a thing where people go full on minimalist. If forced to select, I’d go that way also instead of droning on (touche’!) but that don’t mean it’s a good thing. If you’re room description is “There are 2 Skeletons armed with swords standing in the center of the room. “ (and that happens here, and I’m not cherry picking) then we have a few questions to ask ourselves.

Fundamentally, what is the point of a published adventure? I have struggled with my own answers to that, in contrast to what I see routinely published. We just roll on a random table and put monsters in rooms? That was Vampire Queen. The very minimalist approach that was taken in, say, B2 or G1?  And I mention those two specifically because of the range of quality, I think, that exists between them. A minimal description, almost on a wandering table, with perhaps a “ad the orcs are rolling dice” vs a more integrated environment for the encounters with better surrounding context … and yet still tending toward the minimal and terse side of the spectrum. And then go to the other end, with full on page or half page descriptions of rooms. Quarter page rooms. You know the type. Droning on to little purpose, confusing word count with gameable content. Somewhere in here is the right balance. Somewhere in here the designer has done more than I could have by rolling on a table by myself. And, thus, what value, to me, the purchaser? If I grab a map and roll random encounters to populate it … what value is there is a designer does that for me? If we roll on another table, of room features, and put a well in one room and a table in another … has enough value finally been added that I feel like Yes, I Do Not Feel Ripped Off. But I ain’t no senators son and Andrew Eldritch tells me that I need more. “The large, 10ft deep well in the center of the room is dry, with a pile of bones at the bottom” Is that enough? Are you not entertained? Well, maybe it’s better than two skeletons standing in a room? How about “A thin beam of light comes through a small hole in the ceiling and falls on the center of the room, where a knocked-over pedestal lays on the floor. On the pedestal is a broken, rusted iron sundial.” But there is nothing else here. You can’t set it up or repair it to some effect. It’s just like a room with a broken table, or the chess players in Dwimmermount. 

What’s lacking here is everything that would, in my opinion, add value to an adventure. There is little in the way of evocative language used to describe rooms. The interactivity here is almost always confined to stabbing things. And even that feels a little staid  I see anything here beyond a simple roll on a random table for a creature and another for maybe room contents and then turning that in to a sentence or two. It’s very VERY basic in the way it is presenting encounters. Not really any situations at all anywhere in it. Lareth? Nope.

So, I’m not really hating on this. I guess if you flopped this down in front of me at a cone I could run it immediately, which is more than I could say for most adventures. (This being the standard for when I ran games for the RPGA; no forewarning, just “run this” three minutes the game started”) But that’s small praise. No, it’s not a badly written monstrosity. It is instead a rather bland crawl.

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/514265/the-ruins-of-arbel-monastery?1892600

Also, I really wish I could find my old RPGA number from … 1979?

By R. Nelson Bailey
Dungeoneers Guild Games
1e
Levels 3-6

The dungeons of Mal-Thenga lie below the ruins of a once-great city, its name now lost in the dust of time. Long have adventurers come to its darkling halls in search of glory and treasure. Now, the forces of Law and Chaos ensconced in the sprawling complex’s blighted chambers vie for complete control of the dungeons. These dungeons once served as the seat of power for the enigmatic Two-Faced God. Here, minions of this forgotten deity patiently wait to fulfill the prophecy that will restore his shrine to its former splendor.

This 48 page dungeon presents a five level dungeon with about 120 rooms that is an exercise in tedium. An obscene amount of text working towards a mighty battle between Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil, it engages in the chief of all adventure sins: To Be Read. 

Ruined city. Inside it is a ruined temple with a (single) 10×10 entryway leading to below. Under that a five level temple dedicated to the god that keeps lawful evil and chaotic evil in check. Battle your way through what I think is every level appropriate monsters in every monster manual to reach the demiplane where you unleash their cosmic warriors to do battle in the dungeon: LE vs CE!

And I have no idea why the party is there or engaging in things. To them, it is presented as just a dungeon. I guess, maybe, we are doing a Tharizdun thing here where you stumble on to something in what is otherwise a crawl? Anyway, you end up in this extraplanar place and the herald of LE and CE demand tokens and then they weigh out the tokens on a cosmic scale and blow some giant horns and then warriors stream out of gates and down stairs and through other gates only to meet in the dungeon proper and engage in a mighty battle between themselves and the dungeon occupants until one side wins. *whew*. Only I have no idea why the party, who have, I guess, stumbled on to them, are engaging in this activity. They are compelled, no save, to provide the tokens, which I guess is the parties only act in the process. But, also, just don’t? Go back home? The text tells us that tha the heralds will attack if the party resists. “Once engaged in melee, they strike with their weapons, inflicting terrible blows on the unbelievers with them. These beings offer their enemies no quarter and fight to the death. (Players who insist on battling the Heralds face a high likelihood of death. A merciful GM can have an astral deva appear to intervene on their behalf to battle this fell pair. If successful, the deva requires the party to complete a quest on behalf of a god of Good, or sacrifice at least 10,000 gp worth of money or goods in their name.)” Sure. AC0 and 54hp. I guess maybe if you are level three? 

But, also, by this time, you’ve battled through every monster in the books. Medusa. Orcs, gnolls, red dragon, ghouls, ghast, wights, zombies, beetles, origillions, cave fishers, piercers, heucuva, a blue dragon,manticores, hell hounds, minotaurs, trolls, toads, human NPCs, … the list goes on and on. Like, EVERYTHING in this place. But, sure, after making it through all of that those two 54HPd dudes are an issue. Maybe the AC. 

This is a fucking monster zoo. One room on the first level has two ghasts, five ghouls and eight zombies in it. The room leading to this one has a deadly spear trap blocking the way. The room on the other side of this one dead ends in a disenchanter room. Look, I don’t need bathrooms for my monsters, but, also, just a TAD bit of logic, please? And the  entire thing is like this. Just shit everywhere, for no real reason most of the time. A medusa and her scarecrow servant? Sure, why not? There’s no pretext at all.

The text here is OVERWHELMING. Each NPC gets multiple paragraphs, including some backstory. “Korghol works with the enchanter, Bin-Tarso (AREA 69). Together, they seek to dominate the entire Dungeons of Mal-Thenga for Chaotic Evil. The anti-paladin has a violent, vulgar disposition with a sardonic sense of humor. Korghol has an immensely frightening appearance, as fire horribly burned most of the upper portion of his body. The skin on his hairless, grotesque head looks like mottled, melted candle wax. He has a Comeliness rating of 0.” NONE OF THIS MATTERS. You’re just gonna stab him. Ok, so, maybe the hairless grotesque head with burn marks, but that’s it. And this happens for every NPC. In, like the very second room we have the exist described to us three separate times! Besides the map we halso have “Besides the passage leading to the surface, the great hall has seven other exits: four archways leading to AREAS 3 to 6; two large iron-bound doors to AREAS 18 and 23; two secret doors to AREAS 8 and 11; and a bronze door to AREA 7” and then also we have  “Bronze Door: This locked door is set in the middle of the north wall. It leads to the chapel (AREA 7).” It’s fucking insanity. At every opportunity as much text as is seemingly possible is stuffed in to the adventure to give a fully realized view. With little to no aid at the table. 

And How Can This Be?

It’s a kickstarter. Fucking $10k. Every couple of months dude hits for about $10k. Noice! Good job with the marketing! You have found a market and have created a product that appeals to them. A thing to be read. “As with all Dungeoneers Guild Games products, creating a module with quality production, artwork, and printing is the paramount goal of this project.” Uh huh. Production. Art. Printing. This is a memberberry. You get to buy it and read it an d remember the good old days before you gave up on being actively engaged in society. This made for nostalgia/made to read shit disgusts me. But, also, I admire it. Dude published. Dude is making bank. He can take his regular $10k and laugh at everyone else. If the warranty on a car is three years then we spec car parts that last three years and one day in order to build it. You can have quality. You can have a good adventure. You just don’t get it at Gordon Food Service. And that’s ok.

Or, at least, that’s what I am required to say in public. Privately these money grabs disgust me and I would prefer to live in a world of magnificence and wonder and cigarette trees created by the cacophony of sounds of a billion billion chisel-strokes of the Dionysian world-artist. Pardon me while I eat my McDouble.

This is $10 at DriveThru. No preview. Fuck you.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/513361/dungeons-of-the-two-kings-dungeon-delve-special-4?1892600

By Joey Brock
Self Published
Cairn

Ariel is now requesting that a brave adventuring party explore the Crimson Caverns and bring back this device, plus any other artifacts of Zeliah’s, for a generous reward of 100gp or possibly one of Ariel’s relics or spellbooks. Enter the Crimson Caverns and explore the abandoned hideout of the evil sorcerer Zeliah!

This seventeen page adventure features a cavern with sixteen rooms and a cave spider. Enjoy what is one of the lamest adventures I have ever come across.

Some asshat in a nearby village hires you to go explore some nearby caverns, the lair of an ancient evil wizard, and bring back a device they were working on. J’ACCUSE! The party is hired. Because all adventures must come from quest givers who give you 100 coins to go do something for them. And while I believe in the social contract, I would also like to think I have a little more free will and personal motivation than being a middle class quest slave my entire adventuring career. 

The caverns were the home to an evil wizard. Except the wizard isn’t actually evil, she just has some traps and people that wander in get accidentally killed. J’ACCUSE! Another adventure in which no one is actually evil. A world of misunderstandings where people don’t get pissed you killed their favorite pet, mean you no harm, and everything is solved by just … existing? I’m not looking for everything in an adventure to be cut and dried, and there’s certainly a place for normalcy to exist. But, also, you have to have SOMETHING in an adventure to get behind? If the normal and expected outcome is just to wander around and make friends with everyone, well, I guess that’s a vibe. But it’s not the vibe that I think most people are looking for in a game.

In this adventure you fight a giant spider. Maybe. If you go down that hallway. And, maybe, you fight two cave crickets, if you fuck with the moss on the wall that they are eating. Otherwise you just wander around and in to traps that don’t kill you. J’ACCUSE! Nothing to do. No challenge. No risk. No contention, or tension, in the adventure. Do you have to hack everyone down, like in a raid? No, certainly not, but, again, there needs to be some risk and tension in an adventure. 

“Pressing any incorrect glyph causes 1d6 skeletons to appear and attack the PCs.” Mind you, this is in a room without any skeletons in it. J’ACCUSE! This is abstracted. The monsters are not even in status, to let you know that fucking up will case consequences. Youjust push something and some skeletons “appear.” Skeletons in the room, bones, alcoves on the walls with bones in them, these all provide the smallest bit of framing for the encounter that will soon occur. But not here. Just *poof* here they are!

“On the floor is the corpse of an adventurer, clearly dead of blunt force trauma.” J’ACCUSE! Again, abstracted content. This is a conclusion. The oldest piece of writing advice is to show and not tell. The description is one of conclusions. We want a description that makes us think “Ah, an adventurer that has died of blunt force trauma!” Or, even better, a description of a body, and then further investigation by the party reveals that it is an adventurer and that they died of blunt force trauma. The key flow in a game is the back and forth between the party and the DM. They ask something or take an action, the DM follows up. That causes the party to further follow up. This back and forth is the heart of D&D. But not if you deal in abstracted conclusions.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1. No preview, but it’s pay what you want, so, you know …

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/504028/the-crimson-caverns?1892600

By Rustic Ink
Self Published
Shadowdark & "OSR"
Levels: 4

The Order of the New Dawn: Set in the heart of the Iron Duchy, where political tensions are tearing the city apart, a dark cult grows in the shadows, weaving intrigues and threatening to consume everything. The recent death of the ducal family has left the city in chaos, with no legitimate heir to restore order. Ambitious nobles, wealthy merchants, and unscrupulous military figures fight for control of the region. In this volatile climate, the Dragon Zoryak, lurking in the city’s sewers, leads a fanatical cult that seeks to seize power. While the cult’s leader knows that his magical powers are granted by the dragon himself, the followers believe they are serving a divine entity named Zoryak, who promises a “New Dawn” and a better future for them all. As the cult’s influence spreads, mysterious disappearances begin to plague the surface

This eleven page page adventure presents fifteen rooms in a dragons lair. That is also a cult. That is also a sewer. That is also a mine. With a mad scientist. The read-aloud isn’t terrible, but the encounters are essentially just stabbing this rooms monster and rolling a save for a random pretextual effect combined with some DM/designer fiat. Not cool.

The OSR category on DriveThru is littered with Mork Borg and Shadowdark adventures. And this, it turns out, is also a Shadowdark adventure. I probably would have skipped it if I had noticed that. Nothing against Shadowark, but I’m not interested in it.  And why is that? Sewers. And Mines. And a dragon. And a cult. And a mad scientist. I guess when in doubt just chuck everything in there. And none of it really works. It’s sewers. But also the sewers break in to mines! And there’s a cult! But its controlled by a dragon! With a Mad Scientist lieutenant! Who creates mechanical monsters! Sure man, whatever. 

There a turn of phrase here and there that is not terrible, usually in the read-aloud. “An old, rusted iron ladder descends from the market alley into a dark and foul-smelling sewer canal. The atmosphere is thick with humidity and the distant echoes of dripping water. A central channel divides the sewer into two narrow walkways through which sewage fluids slowly flow westward.” Yeah, ok. I’m not the happiest with “old” but we’ve got some dripping water and thick humidity in there with some foul smelling water. Let’s move on the negative, yeah?

Wandering monster have a 50% chance EVERY TWO ROUNDS. That seems a tad rough. The rumor table is boring and abstracted. “A mechanical monster was spotted dragging an unconscious woman through the alleyways of the market in the West Port District.” Well color me thrilled I guess. This is the kind of useless and meaningless writing that just drags me down for the rest of the day. Give the fucking thing some life! Be specific! Not wordy, specific. Spotted by who? A mechanical monster? No. Describe it. That’s the way fucking people work. “Pimp Ray swears he saw something with two heads, shadowy, drag that matchstick girl, no, the other one, down …”  How about a hoooky mchookerson? “A humble woman, wife of a missing sailor, begs for help. Her only clue is that he was last seen in the market of the West Port District. Her faith in heroes drives her to offer everything she has, even if it’s little, and her gratitude will be eternal.” It’s all just non-specific drivel. There’s nothing here to riff on because there’s nothing here. 

The formatting here is weird. It’s a smaller font, maybe four entries to a page. Each one boxed. Boxed text is shaded, bolding and bullets are used. And yet it looks like some wall of text. It’s possible, I guess, to follow the individual rooms and the entries, but man. The boxes around each room do something to this to make me just tilt my head in angst. It’s also fully committed to this, so, for example, the first room, the main sewer line, has this line in it “If the players follow the clues leading to the market, they will find an entrance to the sewer system in one of the market’s alleys.” Thus the transition from the hooks to the dungeon is handled in room one. Which is fine, I guess? It just somehow transgresses against conventional forms .. and for no good reason. And I have to be down for that, I don’t believe in a set formula. But it’s just jarring. 

The interactivity here is low effort. You get in a fight. You trigger a trap. The traps are weird. It’s just a Roll A Save trap, in ome cases, with little to no warning. There’s this pretext sometimes “its a magic trap that effects you if you try to leave the room” but, its just a save and something happens because the pretexts are just “magical effect.” But, then in another place, there’s a trap that more of a special, r puzzle. There’s a read-aloud that says “Halfway through the passage, a thin beam of dim light crosses from one side to the other. The rocks on the floor in this section appear unusually smooth and marked with scars from fire.” 

We get some descriptions that tell us, in boxed text “The air is heavy and warm [GREAT!] filled with a mineral scent [Great!] that irritates the throat.” I’m not sure I would have put that very last part, the throat, in the description. I’d have left it out and roleplayed it, as a mystery that the party doesn’t know about, letting them make the leap of logic from mineral scent to irritated throat.  In another place we get some abstracted descriptions “The images on the tapestries are very disturbing.” And thats the FOLLOW UP description. The initial one says something like sacrifices or something. It’s just explaining, again, WHY you have to make a save in the room. Because the tapestries are disturbing. 

“Karstov and his concubine (a Fanatic) are indulging their base instincts” When you put sex in an adventure then you want to talk to the player about sex and you’re horny. Unless its his mom hes fucking, and its integral to the adventure, I don’t need to know. 

The dragon, the cultists, the mechanical monsters … no descriptions for them. Enjoy your abstracted adventure. The cultists are just dudes. Who wrote that great thig for the cult in the that WotC Tiamat adventure? THOSE were great cultists! Oh, the dragons treasure hoard does self destruct and melt in 1d4 turns. You think they mean forty minutes? I can snag a lot in ten minutes. Also, I don’t really care if it slags; I’ll haul it out and get it made into ingots. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1. The preview is all eleven pages, so, nice preview. I approve! Well, of the preview …

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/513164/the-order-of-the-new-dawn?1892600

By Charles Smith
Charles Smith Games
OSE
Levels 1-3

In the village of Edgewamp, ancient bad blood has finally led to bloodshed, and from this a new and terrible mosquito god has been conceived. Now monstrous mosquito-men steal away the inhabitants of Edgewamp to be drained of their bodily fluids in a secret sunken temple in the swamp, where the god-fetus waiting to be born screams out for blood… and the treasures of hell itself wait to be looted.

This seventeen page adventure presents a small swamp temple with seven room and some giant mosquito action. It has that kind of farcical tone combined with some depression that I really enjoy, but takes it too far in to comedy in the last bits of the adventure. It’s doing a pretty good job until it can’t figure out to write a temple dungeon.

Small swamp town. Two feuding families. Things go too far, someone gets killed and blah blah blah, an accident happens and a new temple rises from the swamp, with a new god gestating in it. Mosquito men and giant mosquitos raid the town … and one, killed, was adorned in LOTS of jewelry. There’s some motivation for you 🙂  I’m going to cover this thing in two parts: everything before the swamp temple and then the end: the swamp temple. 

This has a wonderful tone to it. It just hits, over and over again. Specificity. Humans acting like humans. A little farce/hyper realism and just a tiny amount of folklore, if you squint. That hook I mentioned sets the scene: there’s loot on the mosquito men. Sure, people are dying, but the bell rang/there’s loot! The town leader is “Big head, wide-set eyes, meticulously well-kempt. “ and VERY fond of ceremony. And will waste the parties time at every opportunity through rubbing elbows. You know the type. And I do! The sheriff, prob a drunk now, who things this is all his fault. A capulet drinking himself stupid in the bar because he KNOWS it was his fault cause when he stabbed that Montague in the swamp he mouthed off, being silly. “Let your blood be resigned to whatever dark god resides here.” Which is a pretty cold thing to say to someone as they die. Unless it summons a new god, of course. His two buds are witnesses. Wonder if he gets drunk and shuts them up to hide things? The bar hirelings are great “: Huge, arms like tree-trunks, big ears. Doesn’t know where he is, only that he’s here to fight bugs. Very kind, and fiercely loyal if treated halfway decent. Zero survival instinct”. And then there’s the head Capulet, arm in a sling, all withered and drained cause of a giant mosquito attack, willing to put the feud aside. And others in the village not willing to. It just hits and hits and hits with the kind of petty social situation that can blow up and helps bring everything to bright color. Situations, opportunities, chances for the party to interact. It’s fucking great. Just reality, pushed a tony bit further. Transition to the swamp journey and you get The New Center Of The Universe, a bullwug camp overflowing with pomp and circumstance. “A gullygug dressed in the mud-caked finery of kings, but with a strong preference for quantity over quality. Wears three capes unless the situation calls for more. “ And then a wanderer called The Country Grig Jamboree, where a grig band passes by and invites you to dance. Doing so ends well. Not doing so causes them to try and do their charm shit. That’s a great fey encounter! They are not just being assholes. The PARTY are the assholes, for not dancing. Rude. Also, the bullywugs hate the grogs, and there are some half-bullywugs in town  you might accidentally get in to your party … It’s all connected man! Maybe the weakest of the special is Mother Sweettooth the swamp hag. She’s just a monster with nothing special about her, which is sad considering all of the specificity and situations everything else brought to the table up to this point.

And then we go over the edge.The temple. Seven rooms. The map has the “always on” features on it, which is great. But it also lacks any other features. Giant staircase in the first room, leading to the second level? Not on the map. NOTHING is on the map. More importantly than this, though, is the tone. If the adventure up to now, with the town and swamp, touched on being lightly farcical and perhaps a little folklorish, this thing just is full on comedy. And comedy doesn’t work in adventures. You can throw in some shit here and there, but if you explicitly lean in to it then its gonna fall flat. Three mosquito-men scribes in a room argue. “They speak the common tongue, although one of the points of contention is whether “mosquito-man” should be a language, and if so what should the grammatical rules be, and has anyone considered how a new language is going to impact the rhyming scheme of the three half finished poems we already agreed on?” This is one of your seven encounters. Another is a priest casting the bones for divinations. But his god isn’t a god yet so it doesn’t work. But that doesn’t stop him. And he does it for literally EVERY decision he makes, even if he is being taken advantage of. The dungeon just isn’t large enough, at seven rooms, to support this sort of aside rooms. In something larger? Sure.Room six dazzles us with the following, complete description: “Pile of dried up bloodless bodies, along with some of their treasure. “ 

The language falls down. The specificity is absent. Where it exists it devolves in to comedic fantasy. Everything up until now has been great and, now, that the main event is at hand, it just doesn’t exist anymore. Stab some things and then meet people wearing funny hats doing silly walks and then stab them. This is NOT what the adventure was up until this point. The hag encounter is the closest it comes, where we get a Mother Sweettooth name, but nothing else but a monster. No situation. And the temple has no situations other than those comedic ones. It’s just fucking boring when you get to what would normally be considered “the main part.” (Blah blah blah, journey is the destination, the friends we made along the way.) 

It’s a hard pass, but also the designer is not on the No Go list. Let’s see what the future holds and if they can seal the deal after all of the flirting.

“[Town NPC] Is pretty sure he can find the mosquito-man lair. He’s wrong, won’t admit it until 3 days of wandering fruitlessly in the swamp.”

This is $2 at DriveThru. Alas, there is no preview, and thus I cann;t share with you the good parts of it.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/513388/blood-for-the-mosquito-god-ose?src=newest_recent?1892600

By Paul Hoeffler
The Alchemical Press
OSRIC
Levels 1-3

Navigating through the sprawling wilderness, your party enters the quaint hamlet of Braeford, a community perpetually besieged by marauding rat raiders. Your mission unfolds amidst this perilous backdrop, promising a blend of adventure, danger, and unexpected discoveries.

This 30 page adventure has the party fighting orcs, kobolds, and other humanoids in a couple of missions given to them by the town guard. The sites are boring and staid and the text to get there is loooonng and without much flavour. 

I don’t want to hear it. It could have been good. There was that adventure back in Dungeon that was good. Or maybe had potential? I forget. Anyway, it shrunk you down. “Rely on your ingenuity!” this one says. Ha! Nothing like that. This is a mouseworld adventure. You get turned in to mice. The rest of this is just the boring version of D&D. Instead of humans there are mice people. Instead of orcs and kobolds there are rats. Instead of gnolls there are black rats. Your size does not matter AT ALL. Everything is scaled to you. The only thing that DOES seem to matter is the occasional hawk or owl. That’s the only evidence that this is not bog standard D&D. And “giant hawk” and/or “giant owl” are, I think, monsters that have appeared. Again, this is just normal old D&D. Everything is scaled down and a search/replace has been done to replace orc with rat. NOTHING else matters related to a mouse-sized world or a being a mouse. If you take B2 and replace “human, elf, dwarf” with “mouse” and all of the monster names with some derivation of “rat” then you understand what this adventure is. Window dressing. Nothing more.

And, at that, it’s pretty poor. Three thing happen. When you reach town one, after transforming, it is raided at night by “rats.” After that you get encouraged to go ferret (ha!) them out at their lair. Which is seven rooms. Then you go to an overrun fortress with eleven rooms with rats. End of adventure. Nothing interesting happens in any part of this. Oh, it’s a room with two rats. Oh, it the literal tripwire pit trao. Oh, it’s a room with rats, rat women and rat children. It’s a room with one rat. Oh, it’s a room with some rats in it. Of, it’s a room with a rat and some prisoner mice.It’s the rat shaman room, and then the rat leaders room and then the double rat treasury. It’s just a room with a fucking rat, man. You stab it and move on. The other stuff is like this also. And there’s no real order of battle, just stab them and move on. Oh! Oh! The initial town raid? You know, the rats raid the town of mice in the middle of the night. The DM is given three options.  A sentry can shot the alarm, or the party can lead the defences, or some soldiers can come to help the party. That’s it. The section takes up a third or half a page and there is NOTHING to it. Just that they attack. No details beyond what I typed. No vignettes No situations. 

Worry not though! The text is long and the only formatting is an occasional section break or the bolded monster in a room. It takes THREE LINES to tell us one room has light in it. THREE FUCKING LINES. Conversational and padded out.  “If you camp for the night then there will be a higher than average probability of a random encounter (twice as likely)” Jesus Christ man. “Like most of the town he is a follower of the goddess Berwyn” It’s just meaningless trivia, padded out FOR. EVER. I was thinking about this. Where do people learn this? It has to be that they are emulating all of the previous adventures they have seen. The endless text blobs or WoTC and Paizo and Chaosim. That’s what people think an adventure is so that’s what they write. Would that I could just snap my fingers and make all of these things go away. But, of course, a good adventure is only a side effect, the big boys are looking for sales. A good adventure is just a nice coincidence. 

The very first door in the adventure, that hides EVERYTHING else behind it, is a problem. You must succeed in a lockpick, break it down roll or spell it open. And if nothing fails? I guess you’re stuck there forever Now, obviously, thats not going to happen, the DM is going to fudge something. But then WHY?! Why put it in there? It is meaningless. 

There is absolutely nothing to see here. 

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You’re going to have to intuit, from pages four through six, how the formatting and padding goes.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/497328/module-m1-a-miraculous-mousy-metamorphosis?1892600

I’m gonna go listen to Dua Lippa on repeat to get through this.

By Pitiless as Bronze Productions
Self Published
OSR
Level 1

While on pilgrimage to the winter faire at Saint Lewiston, the outcasts become entangled in the fates of a decaying monastic order and an otherworldly creature that might be their salvation, or the last rusty iron nail in their coffin. Now with inter-player paranoia and inquisitors!

This 36 page adventure is laid out in seven scenes revolving around the discovery of a wounded angel and that discoveries intersection with The Inquisition. An interesting concept that tries to do a sandbox in a scene based format. And wordy for what it is.

THis is based off a hex encounter in the Mythic North hex crawl for Outcast Silver Raiders. That encounter is a dude that has an angel under a tarp in his wagon. It mashes that up with some information about The Inquisition of the Black Bishop also found in the hex crawl. Thus, this adventure is doing what all hex crawl refs do: taking something tha party just stumbled across and riffing on it with something else that the party has stumbled across.

The pretext here is that the party is on the road travelling to someplace else. First, they meet a group of villagers, fellow travellers, who are injured. Turns out they got hit by bandits. Also turns out that they are feeling a village that the Inquisition just hit. We have, here, hints of a couple of upcoming encounters. And, sure enough, the very next encounter is with some bandits attacking a small group of monks. Saving them can give you a leg up when you hit encounter three, the Monastery of Sabriel. They are devoted the the angel Sabriel, who has not graced them with blessings in quite some time. Blah blah blah. Whatever. Next up we meet a cheery peasant on the road with a wagon and a tarp in the back … and an angel under it, in a very weakened state. This is the last normal encounter. From here you get to decide what to do. Take the angel? Help the dude to sell it? Free it? Kill it? The adventure could go several different places, literally. Next up the party meets a scout for the Inquisition, and then in the final encounter the Inquisition proper. They could meet the party on the road, or at the monastery, or in a town, or … you get the idea. Whatever the party decided to do, with the angel, they will then meet the scout and then the main Inquisition group. The DM needs to riff in these two encounters with the choices the party made earlier on what to do.

If we consider the opening scenes the hook, the pretext, then the closing scenes, with the angel and the Inquisition, aer the payoff. And it is here that the adventure shows its cracks. It is trying to represent a kind of natural flow and progression through the use of its scene based formatting. But the manner in which it does this is clumsy. It is, essentially, trying to say that the party should encounter the angel, and encounter the scout and encounter the main force. But, also, it doesn’t know what the party has decided to do prior to this. So while the opening scenes are rather static, you meet this person at this place doing this thing, the final ones must be more free flowing and open to being riffed on. This means the adventure, in the “scenes” must resort to something akin to “if the party is here then the baddies do this thing and if they are doing this then they are doing this” and so on. During this, in spite of the page count” we lose the specificity that brings an adventure life. 

I think perhaps that this shows the promise of a more traditional way to write a sandboxy adventure. Viewing a lot of this as hooks, we focus on motivations and goals, quirks and relationships. Toss in a few problems to get the party moving around. We then have a much more open ended adventure with the DM using the resources provided to respond to the party, perhaps with the benefit of a timelines of escalations. The DM responds to the parties actions by the counter actions of the various parties, be they the inquisition or a disgruntled peasant or monks or whatever. 

I’m not morally opposed to scene based adventures. They tend to not be my thing, in general, but I recognize that many folks play this way. The issue here is the mixing of the scene based format with what is, inherently, a more open ended set of potentials from the party and reactions from the other NPC’s. Confusing is not the word for it, but the if/thens grow tedious in a world where a more opened ended format would have suited it better. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages, near the end. It doesn’t really give you much of an idea of what you’ll be buying, so, bad preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/510894/the-unfortunate-brotherhood-outcast-silver-raiders?1892600

By Xapur
Self Published
OSE
Level: NONE

A long time ago, a legendary hunter lived in the forest near a small village. He was ruthless and cruel, and delighted in tracking and killing dangerous foes and monsters. No, you have to find a missing son. Will you dare explore the Halls of the Hell Hunter?

This six page adventure uses about two pages to describe eighteen rooms in a tomb. It relies on abstracted descriptions and a minimalism style. This causes it to come off as a rather generic and unmemorable adventure with little to recommend. 

On the plus side, the entries are terse. No hunting for information here …

This is an EASL adventure, so I get to be an asshat here, making assumptions about someone whose english is far far better than any of the other languages I speak. But, also, the adventure borders on being illegible., Looking at the cover, the text on it is in white, with a black outline, on a blue background. It just looks blurry to me. And continuing inside, I’m not sure what it is, the kerning maybe? In any event it, also, looks somewhat blurry to me. Like the letters are bleeding in to each other. And then the map. We’re trying to do some fancy shit there with the grid and so on. But again it comes off small and hard to read. And the key numbers are in a light blue font with a light stroke weight. You’ll be hunting to find them on the map. Legibility is, perhaps, the very first thing on the adventure checklist. In order to run the adventure you have to actually be able to READ the adventure. I guess people think that the font they select is going to look cool. I don’t know. Maybe? But also it has to be readable and in far too many cases I see a font choice result in legibility issues and I seldom if ever think that the unusual font choice is cool, outside of a handout. I’m sure folks will argue that you can have an aesthetically pleasing thing to look at and be legible. And I’m sure that’s a correct statement. Just as I’m sure that if you’re picking a cool font you have deluded yourself in to thinking that its perfectly legible. 

On to the background and intro! The setup here is that a legendary hunter lived in a forest near a small village. Hmmm, sound familiar? Yes, the marketing blurb is the intro. It’s repeated, of course, but go read it again. It is abstracted, yes? Exactly like one would expect in a marketing blurb. Except the actual background is just as abstracted.  There is ZERO specificity here, even of the piss poor variety found in most adventures. “A mother for the village needs help: her young son has disappeared in the forest, searching for the famous tomb. The party has a mission: find the kid…”  That’s your specificity. There is NOTHING here more specific than that in all of the background or intro. Hmmm, no, “legendary hunter” was killed by a green dragon. It’s irrelevant, but, also, I guess it is specific. 

Lets hit the room keys, shall we? “The body of a young male human lies on the ground. He has been killed by a stone arrow. A mother will cry.” Well, props, I guess, for putting the pretext in the first room of the dungeon. But, how about: “A room dedicated to Dralena, the goddess of the hunt. The walls are decorated with decrepit tapestries of rural scenes and wild animals (stags, boars, foxes…).” This is not sterling writing. I’m not even sure what style to call it. Minimalistic, I guess. 

There’s an almost obsessive lack of detail of detail here. “In the altar, a hidden cache contains a magical hunter’s dagger.” What kind of magic dagger/ What does it do? No idea. And no stats of ANY kind are present AT ALL. Not even Ye Old Skill Check DC 16. “Weakened stalactites can fall from the ceiling, especially if there is noise in the vicinity.” 

These are all concepts. Its what you might jot down in the middle of the night, or on the drive to work, to remind you of an idea to expand upon further. But they are not expanded upon. The abstracted idea, the conceptual, barely that, is all that is described.

Specificity is the soul of the narrative. Don’t drone on in detail, but instead carefully select the important bits to be  specific about. That’s what brings lifes to an adventure. 

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages and shows you the map and some room keys, so, good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/512435/halls-of-the-hell-hunter?1892600