Tower of the Moon

Posted on October 14, 2019 by Bryce Lynch 
By David Pulver
Night Owl Workshop
S&W
Levels 3-6

[…] The tower filled with howls and screams. Tales say that all perished in the struggle, the frenzied wolves even turning against their pack mates and devouring one another; only a few servants escaped to tell the tale, and recall Mordark’s dying words to Artesia before he was eaten alive: “if I could not share the Tower of the Moon beside you in life, I do so in death…” Today, the Tower of the Moon is a monster-haunted ruin, its shadow falling over dark forest and desolate wilderness. Only the brave or foolish dare its secrets.

This delightful 23 page digest adventure details a tower with four levels and about 25 rooms. Interactive, interesting, and not too overwritten, it provides that OD&D like vibe that I enjoy so well. It could also use some work for scanability. 

The cover is actually a decent depiction of the tower, imagine that! And the front door of the tower? You enter through the teeth of a giant wolf head face carved in to it. Mythic Underworld here we come! These are but two examples of the decent design that Pulver imbues in to this adventure. Making the art work with the adventure to help inspire the DM and evoke the setting, as in the case with the cover picture. And then there’s the wolf head. You’re passing somewhere else when you go through it, and everyone knows it. The mood changes. It’s D&D time. You’re elsewhere now. The rules are all wrong and every perversion is justified. 

But, I shouldn’t have started the review in the middle. This thing has the OD&D thing going on. What is that? It’s a degree of creativity that is not standardized for your convenience. As D&D has aged and the various editions have marched on, the various tropes of D&D have become more and more ingrained. Sword, +1. Hero. Innkeeper. Loyal Knights of blah blah blah. Everything comes from a book. Going the other direction there tends to be more non-standard elements and they tend to be combined in more unusual ways. That first level of The Darkness Beneath does this well. A flaming roll rolling the ceiling shooting off fire blasts didn’t come from no book. Nor did cursed plate mail shouting “Here I Am!” or an orange gem that you can use to shoot fireblasts … until it ,elts your hand off.  None of this is writ in stone, of course, it’s just a general trend; exceptions abound. But it’s also a convenient shorthand label.

This has that OD&D feel. There’s a magic well with curses and delights. It’s related to silver, and the moon, and has a sullen werewolf in it. And, it does magic stuff. One example is that it can turn stone back in to flesh, like the cockatrice statue you found in an earlier room, if immersed. But that’s an example, not an exhaustive list. It reminds me of the way LotFP (the system or an adventure, I forget which) used Bless as a kind of general-purpose thing. It wasn’t exhaustively spelled out and with the spell you could, well, Bless things. AND WHAT HAPPENED DEPENDED ON WHAT YOU WERE TRYING TO DO. The game world kind of made sense, general guidelines were set up and left for the DM to follow. And this adventure does a lot of things that feel like this.

Interactivity abounds and the monsters are sometimes integrated in to that. A ballroom, with shadowy dancing figures … that beckon you to join them. Shadows. (A nit: if you survive 30 minutes of dancing with them they kiss and release you. You should have gotten something for that, a +1 con or wis or something else. Reward must come to the daring, or else no one will ever be daring.) Rooms are generally written in a neutral tone, not designed against the party but rather existing for the party to exploit or fall for. A statue with a face that speaks? Do you give it a drink? Kiss it? These are the ways of OD&D and these are the ways of this adventure.It’s done well and I like it.

One the mediocre side if Pulvers writing and roo morganization. It’s primarily paragraph based, three or so per room of maybe two to three sentences each, with monster stats being bolded. Each paragraph generally describes one thing fully. I suggest that this is a poor format, in the form its taken here. Room two is a store room. The first paragraph details smashed crates and casks, blood stains, etc. The second gives more detail, a discarded mace and a broken quarterstaff. And the statue of a surprised elf. HOLY FUCk?!?!! What?!?!?!  This format forces the DM to read the entire room description before running it. Not. Cool. We don’t delay games because of bad writing. Better to bold important details in other paragraphs, or, put all of the majorly important/obvious stuff in the first paragraph and then use the later paragraphs to follow up, perhaps with bolding to draw the eye immediately to the correct place. Otherwise we need to bring out Ye Olde Highlightere. And what do we say to designers that force us to do that? That’s right: Go Fuck Yourself, it was your job to do that for me, the DM/consumer. It’s not egregious in this adventure, but its enough to be annoying. 

“Bob the wraith Lord put 7 skeletonsin this room (using his magic book) to prevent him from being disturbed.” That’s fucking trivia. Use that word count to create a more evocative description or increased interactivity, not to justify the existence of why there are 7 skeletons in the room. That trivia has no impact on the adventure being run and is this (almost always) irrelevant, distracting, reduces scanability, and the word count used for better things. It smacks of the crimes of pay per word padding.

Treasure is light. Really light. So light I wonder if Pulver has run a S&W campaign before. And  there’s a lot of boring old +1 magic items. That’s a serious miss and substantial departure from the OD&D ways that the encounter in this feel like. Other than that there’s amiss here and there; one room has a high ceiling with an overlook/balcony … that isn’t actually mentioned at all until you get to those higher rooms. Oops. Plus, if this had been the other way round, with the gallery encountered first, we would have had a classic Thracia tease. But, it’s the lack of balcony mention that’s the sin.

Still, A decent adventure for its flaws. Interactivity is strong. Themes are strong. Creativity is strong. Organization and evocative writing are at least not terrible. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3. It’s certainly well worth that price. The preview is six pages and shows you fuck all of what you are actually buying. You get to see the full tower maps (there are mini-maps for each level also) as well as the bullshit background pretext and hook. But there’s nothing of the actual room contents. Major miss with that; that’s what we’re paying for, that’s what the preview should show us a bit of so we can determine if its crap or ok.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/289553/Tower-of-the-Moon?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 12 Comments

(5e) The Temple of Misfortune

Posted on October 12, 2019 by Bryce Lynch 
By William Murakami-Brundage
Menagerie press
5e
Levels 1-3

The adventurers are sent to stop a pair of star-crossed lovers and collect the bounty on a gang of ruffians. Unfortunately, the bandit hideout is on the grounds of a haunted temple, and the recent tumult has awoken the restless dead.

This 24 page adventure details the grounds of a ruined temple with 36 rooms in about seven pages. The writing is mostly flat which forces a generic feel to plae in spite of several attempts to beef it up with some non-generic details. “Not odious” does not mean “good”, but the designer at least has a good start on producing better work.

Girl runs away with bandit in order to have a more exciting life. Her dad, a petty noble, has promised her hand in marriage to someone else to cement power. Bring her back! Oh, and the bandit also has a bounty on his head. This is the pretext to the adventure. The entire thing is explained in a one page summary overview which is clear and well organized. The hook-ish/hiring part in the town is also covered quite well in another page, also generally well organized and clear, not overstaying its welcome. It does force you to read instead of making better use of highlighting, bolding, bullets and whitespace for better scanning. Still, in and out quick, so it’s not terrible. The worst thing to be said is that “she eloped” is shouted out by the crier in the town square, in the “reward” call to action. That would probably be kept quiet, or at least reserved for a private audience with the noble/staff. 

36 rooms in seven pages is a decent density for 5e. The rooms generally don’t overstay their welcome with excessive trivia and background and read-aloud. Skill checks are done better than in most 5e, with logic and common sense coming in to play at numerous opportunities. 

The maps, two of them, appear to be Dyson affairs. Two of the better ones, one of an outdoor ruined temple/manor area and one of a small cave system. Both are noticeably more open than usual and have unusual features like tree copses and water features scattered throughout. The maps would have done well to have “rooms with reacting monsters” marked in them on the map, for ease in DM’ing. In addition, a side-view/perspective piece of art, showing the ruined temple, would have been in order. Given the number of collapsed wall and the general ruined nature, a more 3d adventuring style would have been well supported by this and a better use of the art budget than the generic full color monster art that several pages were devoted to. 

And on a related note, the ruins could have used with an overview description for the party. It just starts out with room 1, the ruined bridge that leads to the ruins. Some adventuring areas lead themselves to a scenic overlook type of situation. When you can survey the whole of an area from a distance the adventure deserves a little overview section, noting general features and standouts. If there’s a ruined dome with a bright light shining up out of it then it makes sense to mention that when the party first looks down on the place, doesn’t it? Otherwise you’re relying on the DM to either remember the important details of every room and if they apply to the scenic overlook description, or forcing them to go through the adventure and make notes. And if the DM has to make notes then the designer has probably failed in some way. 

The writing in this is generally flat. In spite of a few words like “tarnished bell” or “rusty pots and pans”, it generally just comes off as boring old generic ruins. The writing really needs to be beefed up with better use of adjectives and adverbs. I’m not advocating more MORE words, but generally different ones. I loathe purple prose, but it’s the designers job to bring the scene to life in the DM’s head. You have to give the DM something good to work with, something for their imagination to take ahold of and run with. You’re inspiring them, or you’re supposed to be anyway. The writing in this doesn’t do that. 

In particular I’ll mention the Shadows in the adventure. A lot used to be halfling bandits, some didn’t. But none of them really get any description at all. Either of them or how they rise and attack. A couple of hiding under the bed and come out to attack. Much better to have the shadows of the corners of the room to stretch, or to see them rise in some malign way from the slain bodies on the floor, yes? Something to make them come ALIVE. 

I note that this uses the modern 5e adventure convention of noting, at the start of the keyed entries, the sights, sounds, lighting, and terrain. I get the reason, and it’s ok. But that’s not an excuse to NOT include it in the individual rooms also. Bring them to life! Also, wouldn’t this information be much better suited for the map? Imagine 18 point font at the top of the map reminding the DM of the dusty nature and the occasional moans of the undead. From where, the players ask? The DM consults the map to find the nearest room that has monsters marked on it. That’s how all of this is supposed to work together to hel the DM bring the adventure to life. 

It does little good to tell us, as this adventure does, That room “10. Kitchen. This was a kitchen …” yeah, no shit, you just told us that. Or that the ruined bridge once allowed people to access the temple. Or that the well once provided water to the temple. Ok, that last one is mine, I made it up, but you get the idea. The trivia, backstory, and repetition does us no favors. At worst, it ills the adventure with garbage that the DM has to fight through while scanning for the important bits. They added nothing to the actual adventure. Use that word count to instead add more interesting adjectives and adverbs to make the place come alive.

It’s an ok adventure, if with a generic vibe. It does integrate the pretext in pretty well, with the halfling eloper/bandits, without making it a railroad. Maybe a little light on treasure. Alas, I have no time in my life for ok adventures and as such I’m afraid this gets buried in with the mountain of 5e adventure dreck on DriveThru. Still, high hopes for the future with this designer. I hope they can beef up their writing and give some more holistic thinking to adventure supporting the DM. Maybe finding a good DM or two that they can use as playtesters, who will tell them what they had to do to run it, so things can be corrected before publication. Yeah, hard work. Same as with the evocative writing. But that’s what separates the garbage with an idea from the good.

This is $6 at DriveThru.The preview is nine pages, with the last three showing you some of the room keys. You can get an idea of overview, hook summary, and how it uses its text to bring it to life (or not.) In that respect it’s a good preview. You can also see how it handles skill checks a little differently than most 5e adventures. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but it’s nice to see a little more sanity in that area. 


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/286939/Temple-of-Misfortune?1892600

Posted in 5e, Reviews | 3 Comments

The Hobgoblin Bride

Posted on October 9, 2019 by Bryce Lynch 
By Megan Irving
Aegis Studios
O&O
Levels 1-2

Urgoblins are an all-male hobgoblin subrace who have limited regeneration abilities. Most urgoblins live among other hobgoblins with no issues; however, some believe their abilities are a gift from Ragnar and a sign that they should be leaders of their clans. Some of these urgoblins have split from their hobgoblin clans and come together to create an all-urgoblin clan, focused on taking over and ruling the Untamed Gauntlet. To further this goal, they’ve kidnapped hobgoblin women with the plan of breeding more urgoblins to join their power-hungry army. Mara is one of these women, and she has recently managed to escape their clutches, leaving four others behind in her flight to freedom. Mara wants to rescue the other hobgoblin women from the cruel urgoblins. A kindly centaur named Ronan has brought her request to the clerics at Chandra’s Haven, where the party can accept it and attempt to rescue the kidnapped hobgoblin brides.

This eleven page adventure describes ten room hobgoblin hideout. It’s small, simple, and tries to add immersion through trivia, which is never a good idea.

So, yeah, hobgoblin woman wants you to go rescue some other kidnapped hobgoblin women from some regenerating hobgoblins. Ignoring this, let’s talk difficulty. There are fifteen regenerating hobgoblins in the lair, and a few more on the way there. That seems like a lot for level one? I mean, you can stealth, run away, etc, but, still … this seems like a lot even for level two’s? And they regenerate?

It’s another simple map, looks like Dyson. Two ways in/out from most rooms. Nothing too interesting except maybe the two outdoor areas that offer some vegetation, porches, elevation, and other features to spice things up. 

The writing format is not very good. The rooms themselves tend to be rather plain, with trivia descriptions, which follows for most of the hobgoblins also. I mean, yeah, they do get some personalities, especially the women, but there’s this focus on trivia that embedded in to everything and FAR more prevalent than any interesting or evocative detail. One room has some columns. Underneath the paint of one, it’s cracked. Uh. Ok. An Frank the builder constructed it, but that also plays no role in the adventure?

The bad guys gets weird descriptions. Hair tied in a bun. Shaved heads. Mean expressions. One has a goatee, another has a scar across his nose. Another has a vest made of goat pelts. I guess this is ok? I mean, it helps the DM identify them to the players I guess. “The one with the nose scar walks over to the door” and so on. It just feels out of place because there feels like there is very little room for that sort of play.

The rooms are just full of this trivia, all squashed together. What they do when on alert and not would normally be good information, but it’s all mixed up in text form in this. Highlighter time! Except I won’t do that; that’s the designers job, to make the text easily navigable/scannable.

And the treasure is quite light. Almost no loot. I guess maybe Gold!=XP in O&O? Which means it’s a plot RPG? Which means it’s, essentially, a setting for 5e with OSR stats?

This is just another in the long long line of forgettable published adventures. Also, I guess “The Hobgoblin Bride” sounds better than “The Hobgoblin Multiple Gang Rapes Sexual Assault Victim.” Yeah, they put a sexual assault warning on it. And then they humanized her. If you’re gonna do that then calling her a “bride” is kind of disingenuous, eh?

This is $1 at DriveThru. There’s no preview, so just fork over your precious dollar and take what they decide to give you! Fuck yo for wanting a preview anyway! What do you think you are, an informed consumer making a logical purchasing decision?


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/288412/The-Hobgoblin-Bride?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 7 Comments

No Rest for the Wicked

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Bryce Lynch 
By J. Stuart Pate
lotFP
LotFP
Low levels

The year is 1632 and the wars of religion engulf Europe. Can you imagine it? A war so total, everywhere you have ever known and everywhere you might know is touched by it. It’s taken friends and family members. Maybe it swallowed your village whole. Perhaps it even took you, conscripted by a King or an Emperor or a Pope you have never met. […] So, when you seek an inn to stay for the night, why are you so surprised to find the war has arrived ahead of you? 

Hey, there’s a patreon link at tenfootpole.org. My goal is $152,000, at which point I can pay off my mortgage. Seems reasonable to me … 

This 32 page adventure is an outline of a situation that is going to go down in an inn. The party may involve themselves in The Troubles. It is, essentially, an orc baby adventure. It’s pretty well organized, if longer than need be. 

I’ve been on a Lamentations hiatus, burned too many times by Raggi. I saw the “Hell is other people” tagline and, sucker that I am, bit immediately. Insane in the membrane I am. (Again, Hexstatic Cocaine sample.) Have you ever wondered why those three fucks in No Exit don’t just bend a fucking little in order to make eternity more tolerable? I’ve known two people in my life who were intractable and they both, to varying degrees, were self-destructive because of it. Content to watch their life burn down around them rather than reframe. Then again, if our room occupants could do that then they wouldn’t be there, would they? I digress. 

Let’s cover the orc baby situation first. Do you like adventures with orc babies? IE: do you like moral quandaries that can split the party. I don’t. I played in a Mountain Witch game once in which some famous RPG dude was also in. They found the game emotionally unfulfilling. I thought it was kind of fun. If I wanted to play some indie game exploration of death or a crumbling relationship then I’d go watch On the Beach again and get my misery that way. As the Tom Tom Club would say, Fun, natural fun. And before you fucks freak out, I AM a new wave boy, but I know this from Hexstatic Cocaine samples. Anyway. Fun, Natural Fun. I digress.

This being Lamentations, it’s set in the Catholic & Protestant wars in Bohemia. That don’t matter though, you just need a human warzone for it to work. You stop at an inn. There’s a family in the common room. The innkeeper comes riding up (he was gone) and says there’s an army coming. The family go and hide in the basement and the party is urged to not know anything. Some mercenaries show up to stay in the inn … who are actually advance spies for the army. Around 2am an army search party shows up, looking for a deserter who burned down a town. Seems he’s got his family in tow. Motherfucker, my ‘C’ songs suck. After Cocaine it switch to a bunch of shit before I figured out it wasn’t on shuffle. Frankie will have to do. I digress.

The timeline of events is handled on a couple of pages. It is the core of the adventure and it’s just about all you need to run the thing. It’s supplemented by a bunch of words that describe various things the party could do, generally who they help/what they do, and how the NPC’s react to that and it changes the situation. This is almost like a designers notes section, or an outcomes section for follow-ups to the adventure. I really appreciate that sort of thing to get me kickstarted in a direction that I can run with at the table. There’s also a brief description of the inn which is, appropriately, kept short in a non-keyed description. This ain’t an exploration and you just need the barest details of it to run what is, essentially, a social adventure. There’s also a couple of pages of simple inn maps and NPC descriptions. It does a good job giving you a short summary of the adventure up front and then the several page timeline is perfect for actually running the thing. I do not digress.

I might note that I found the NPC descriptions worthless. Well, not worthless, but inadequate. Given the map and the timeline then what this needs is a one page summary of all of the NPC’s; their quirks, looks, motivations, etc. Then you could run the thing without the book at all. Similarly, I might take some of the features mentioned in the inn room descriptions and add them to the map. The sword and gun in the common room, and so on. Maybe some notes, etc, with pointing arrows. This would make the book even MORE superfluous to running the adventure. By now it should be obvious how much I enjoy taking notes and highlighting things in order to run an adventure. If this thing did those two points then it would be pretty great in the “run at the table” department.

It’s ok. I like the drop in nature of it. I might have also appreciated a little more going on, for more chaos, but, as far as orc baby adventures go this one is pretty light on the morality. It just makes you feel like shit no matter what choices you make. Is that fun? I’m gonna regert this, even though it has orc babies.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages and shows you the VERY brief outline of the adventure. That’s a great orientation of whats to come in the more detailed notes. A page of that more detailed timeline, a page of the inn, a page of the outcomes all would have supplemented the preview better than the generic title pages/intro would have.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/281988/No-Rest-for-the-Wicked?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 8 Comments

(5e) The Webbed Herring

Posted on October 5, 2019 by Bryce Lynch 
By David Stapleton, Michael Looney, Keegan Brown
LNC Sages
5e
Level 3

Deep within the forest there are rumors of fell canyon, a place of danger. A small stream runs out of the forest. It is said that following this stream will lead one to this canyon. Whispers have come to the ears of the party of dark crawling things, ancient cults, and shrubbery.

Uh …

This eleven page adventure features seven “rooms” in a small canyon that are described in three pages. It’s just combats, with not even the pretext of a plot. It baffles me how these things come to be. 

That into up there at the start, the publishers blurb that I attach as the first thing in all of my reviews? That’s all there is to this as an intro. That’s your hook, and your reason for adventuring. 

There’s a small canyon with high walls and a stream flowing out of it. Inside are seven chambers. Each one is, essentially, the exact same. You go in. The DM reads four or five sentences of some read-aloud that is meaningless. There’s an obstacle where you have to do some kind of check or fall prone. When you fall prone then either spiders or plants rush out and attack you. Next room is basically the same. And the next. And so on.

I must say, the dedication to “check for fall prone” is quite unusual. I wonder if the designer knows there are other things in D&D? In fact, I note that this wondrous work too the efforts of THREE designers. 

I can’t get over this thing. How ridiculous it is. There’s window dressing. Fish bones. A symbol, broken bones and an axe in a tree. They have nothing to do with the adventure. Because there is no adventure. It’s just go in a room, check for prone, and have a fight. 

Tactical mini’s. This is it. This is what people think D&D is. No wonder. No exploration. No roleplay. No interactivity. Just this. 

I remember a comic. A collection of frames, much like Far Side. One had a goldfish bowl. Two fish inside were looking at another who had flopped out on to the table. “Freedom. Terrible terrible freedom!” says the one on the table.

This is the internet. This is DriveThru. This is lower barrier to publishing. This is the ability of everyone to share their enthusiasm and creativity with everyone else. For better. And worse. 

There are a wide variety of play styles, but, is there some essence that makes D&D what it is? Some platonic form that can be pointed to? This is D&D. This is not D&D. 

Is everything meaningless?

This is $2 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. Otherwise you wouldn’t buy it.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/289017/The-Webbed-Herring-An-Adventure-for-Four-3rd-Level-5e-Characters?1892600

Posted in 5e, Reviews | 7 Comments

The Warren

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Bryce Lynch 
By Simon Miles
Dunromin University Press
OSRIC
Levels 5-8

Baron Ketterall’s lands are beset by a plague of marauding goblins! Goblins you say? Pah! Who’s afraid of a few poxy goblins? But two experienced parties have already gone looking for the goblin lair – never to be heard of again.  Poxy goblins you say? Be afraid, be very afraid…

This 76 page adventure features a two level dungeon with about a hundred rooms described in about forty pages. Featuring about 400 or so goblins of the “Tuckers Kobolds” variety, it’s more of a strategic challenge than tactical one. It’s light on treasure and does a very poor job of presenting a complex environment in a way the Dm can use it well.

The Tucker situation requires some special commentary from me. This is where the monsters know you’re coming and have spent their lives preparing for you. They use every resource at their disposal to stop the party, hit & run tactics, poison, traps, and everything else. I don’t have a problem with this as long it’s done right. Done Right means a couple of things. First, there’s a fine line between the Goblins Are Prepared and DM Is Fucking Over The Party. Goblins that pay to have a dozen wish spells cast is Fucking Over The Party by the DM. Goblins that live in naturally small spaces that are cramped for normal humans, with associated penalties, is more in the correct light. This, gladly engages in that and not the Wish-gimp, and associated, nonsense. Spaces are small which makes fighting and spells harder to cast, traps generally makes sense and are not TOO out there, and the whole thing doesn’t feel like a Gotcha Adventure. There’s also a quid pro quo thing to think about between the DM and party. If you fight 100 orcs and they are all 1 HD and there’s one orc that looks like all the rest but has 100000 HP and disintegrates at will, well, no fair. In this context, if you are playing “normal” dungeons and suddenly get thrown in to this Jim Ward fantasy fest, well, the DM is not holding up his end of the bargain with that orc. There are some hints in the beginning, with two previous parties being killed off, but that’s about all the warning you’re gonna get. And once in You. Are. In. The goblins will harass retreating parties making it very unlikely that a typical scouting foray will make it back. More could have been done in this area to design around the first retreat, or additional warnings in the beginning to ensure the party knows the rules are changing and this is not a tactical challenge but rather a strategic one.

And strategic it is. This ain’t the Caves of Chaos, it’s more akin to solving the Tomb of Horrors with your 200 orc servants. If that’s the adventure you want to run, and the party either knows that’s what’s up or has a chance at an initial retreat, then great. But, like I said, this place is a fucking deathtrap. Well organized patrols outside and inside, including dudes whose only job it is to make noise to keep sleeping parties awake and distract them to wrong directions. There’s a high level of tactics and monster leadership in this dungeon which you’re gonna have to be ok with. Do Chaos monsters do this, to this degree? That, more than anything else, strains the old Belief ‘o Meter. 

The dungeon proper, claims to be three levels, but that includes the outside with about ten locations and then the two underground levels with about fifty rooms each. The encounters are almost all tactics issues. Hit & Run goblins, traps, and heavy heavy poison use. There’s a few “old wizards lair” rooms with more typical interactivity, but the vast majority of the place are tactics rooms for a swat team raid. Or, maybe, a First Ranger Battalion raid. 😉

Treasure seems exceptionally light for levels 6-8 in a Gold=XP game, but the real issue with the dungeon is its organization. Read-aloud is not bad, but the DM text for virtually every room is lengthy and poorly oriented. These rooms end up being complex affairs, with the tactics for various groups frequently mentioned. It ends up being sentences after sentence after sentence of DM text in typical paragraph form. I would suggest that this is not the right way to present this information. Indents, bullets and bolding are SORELY needed to call out important details for the DM to actually run the room without pausing for multiple minutes in each room to digest the text and formulate consequences. As it’s written I don’t see there being much support at all for a DM in running this. There IS a summary sheet for all the monsters, at the end which is GREAT, but the rooms proper need a good rethink in how to organize and layout the text in order to achieve the impact (hell on PC’s) desired. This lack of organization is foreshadowed by the introduction text for the DM in the opening “hook/hiring” scenes. The text is columns long with nothing done to highlight important facts. You either have to memorize it, slow down the game to a monstrous affair, or whip out Ye Olde Highlighter … in which case why didn’t the designer do that for you? 

Likewise support for ongoing effects. Fighting and spell-casting in cramped quarters. Poison impact. These could have been included on the summary sheet in just a few words and quick reference for “Always On” facts needed. Andthe place is supposed to be full of filth and parasites … mentioned once and never again. Imagine, though, a border around each page with some “inspirational” words for filth and parasites for the DM to throw in for each room. That would have been good support for the DM and thrown in a metric fuck ton of great fun for the DM and party.

This ain’t the first Tuckers Kobolds adventure and it won’t be the last. Let’s hope future endeavors come out more like Jim Kramers Usherwood offerings, or those Troll Lord vivking-ish offerings. (Velsham?)

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is nineteen pages, but doesn’t actually show you any encounters, so, poor preview. Your best bet is to look at pages seven through ten of the preview. This describes some general information, like rumors and wanderers and the like. You can get an idea from those pages of how complex information and meaningful information is presented in long column form, making it hard to use as reference during play. 


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/283730/SM06-The-Warren?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments

The Sunken Temple of Chloren-Var

Posted on September 30, 2019 by Bryce Lynch 
Peter Racek
Wolfhill Entertainment
OSR
Levels 1-4

Plunged deep beneath forsaken swamplands centuries ago, the Sunken Temple of Chloren-Var now waits to be rediscovered.  Untold fortune, magic, and ancient secrets await those brave enough to enter the Sunken Temple, but only if they can thwart the unrelenting evil which lurks within its dismal halls.

Uh, so, yeah, this is a thing.

This one hundred page adventure features a dungeon with about seventy rooms. MASSIVE amounts of read-aloud lead to an adventure that is nigh incomprehensible. This is then combined with a “generic” system of play, based on D&D, that seems more like a fantasy heartbreaker. Light on treasure, I’m still having a hard time figuring out what is going with it after going through it multiple times.

I don’t know where to start with this. You go to an inn to find no room in it. Then someone gets killed and you get their room. In it you find a hook to the sunken temple. I guess the motivation is redeeming the dead guy by doing what he failed to do in the dungeon? 

What follows is fifty to sixty pages of read-aloud. In italics. I know I’m prone to hyperbole, but I’m not fucking around. It’s about fifty or sixty pages of read-aloud. The vast VAST majority of the text in this is read-aloud. In italics. 

First the italics. It’s hard to read. Italics works fine for a phrase or to call attention to one part of the text but it is TERRIBLE for long stretches of text. It’s hard to read. Box it, shade it, indent it, but don’t italics ong sections of text. It’s a major usability issue.

Of course, then there’s the length of the read-aloud proper. MOUNTAINS of it. There are page long sections of read-aloud. Every room is full of it. It’s unbelievable; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a product like this before … maybe in Sword of the Bastard Elf or Ocean of Lard? But those were Choose Your Own Adventure things … and it feels like even THEY didn’t have this much. 

It’s bad design 101. People don’t listen to read-aloud. I’ll point out again that WOTC study that found that players stop paying attention after two or three sentences of read-aloud. Clearly designers haven’t gotten the message. 

I know the arguments: zero-prep. Easy to run. But man, there’s far, far, easier and better ways to accomplish that. Slapping “Players React” in the middle of a p[age of read-aloud is not the way to immerse folks and have a good game. There’s so much read-aloud, and it forms in to such a wall of text, that’s it hard for the DM to figure out what is going on inside of this place. Further, when the read-aloud TELLS the players what they feel and think, that’s bad read-aloud. There’s no cohesiveness readily apparent to help the DM run this. After a few runs through the text I’m still having trouble figuring out how the place is supposed to operate.

There’s bolding & indents, which shows an attempt to make things more readable. But it doesn’t work well. The room headings are bolded also, so all of the bolding runs together in places giving an even more wall of text vibe. And Wall of Text is a usability issue. A major one.

The system used here is generic, and based on D&D. It feels more like the old Role Aids generic than it does the Eldritch Enterprises generic. I can’t figure out why the choice was made. You didn’t want to include the Labyrinth Lord license? Deeper in to this, there are new systems for fear, lighting (to the extent that its DM advice includes discouraging light spells and the party bringing in torches and oil. Uh … No.) new systems for locks and searching. There’s more than little fantasy heartbreaker going on.

And it’s random, in places, for the sake of being random. Where are the secret rooms? Roll for it! What are some key plot elements? Roll for it! Why is this? It would have been much simpler to just write a standard adventure, I don’t see this sort of randomness complementing the adventure at all. It’s similar, I guess, to the random elements to Ravenloft. 

This is a curiosity only, to see how far read-aloud can be pushed in an adventure. It’s got very low interactivity, with the party fighting skeletons and couple of puzzles. Treasure is very light for a Gold=XP system, as core OSR is. Let’s hope future offerings are better,

This is $6 at Drivethru. The preview is sixteen pages. In spite of this, you’re going to get no sample rooms, so it’s a failure. Scrolling to the end, you do get to see the (VERY long) intro, and all of the read aloud, which IS an excellent indicator of the sorts of room formatting you’re going to get. Look on my Read Aloud ye mighty and despair!


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/271274/The-Sunken-Temple-of-ChlorenVar?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 12 Comments

(5e) A Mishap of Ill Portent

Posted on September 28, 2019 by Bryce Lynch 
By Travis Legge
Self-published
5e
Levels 1-3

While the characters shop in the marketplace of a small village, a thunderous boom interrupts the peaceful commerce. A large plume of smoke rises from the outskirts of town, and the locals rightly determine that the source of the blast must be the home of a local wizard named Tsendur. Investigating, the party discovers that something terrible and powerful has been stolen from the old wizard that threatens to unleash the power of a long dead Titan and endanger every life on Ghelspad!

This 25 page adventure features a six room tower, on fire, described in three pages. It probably takes place in less than two minutes. It is more like the inciting event to a new adventure path (which is what it is) than it is an adventure. But at least you gain a level after those 100 seconds! The writing is poor, but it does make good use of fire, exhaustion, and terrain rules to create a little scene that’s different than most.

While in town you hear an explosion and see a small home with attached three-level tower on fire in a major way. Unknown to the party, the wizard on the top floor is trapped and unconscious under rubble and will die in 20 rounds. Thus, the time limit, which the party is unaware of. “That’s Franks house” is, I think, the extent of the urgency conveyed. This amounts to a hidden rule and those are typically not good things in D&D. Knowing there’s someone in the house, trapped, allows for more tension as the party makes decisions balancing risk and reward. It’s a small thing to add someone yelling that they say Frank go in the house, but it’s a key issue. The town guard is, of course, otherwise occupied preventing panic. I get it, but why have a town guard at all then? Just put a little work in to your pretext hook people, it’s worth it.

Likewise the use of skill checks in this adventure is poor. DC 14 to notice figures in inside the house. DC 12 to calm someone … to say they say figures, and so on. It’s rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice, for trivia. “Make a DC 10 check to talk across the room” or “Make a DC 12 to tell the sun is shining.” There’s a right way and a wrong way to do a skill check and this thing is absolutely engaged in the wrong way. (ok, Calming someone might be ok, it’s the “trivia” aspect that gets me, every time.)

There’s not a lot of read-aloud, but what there is has an italics font, never a good idea for long sections of text; it impacts readability. It also refers to the party in third person: “While the structure is largely intact as the characters first come to the scene, the fire is quickly spreading.” Uh, ok, so, no effort at all then? THis lack of effort continue to some of the editing: in one of the rooms it looks like there’s meant to be some zombies, but its never mentioned, just some scaling guidelines to include +1 zombies if the party is tough. So, not an editor but rather a copyeditor? Either the text is missing or its unclear, both jobs for our editor. And a good one would have perhaps pointed out that spending a bunch of your word budget (three pages in 25 …) describing the door situation in EVERY SINGLE ROOM is perhaps duplicating what the map shows? But, that’s an editor and not a copyeditor.

Putting all of this nonsense aside, Travis is trying to create a situation in which there’s a burning building that the party needs to deal with. His support of this is admirable. There are rules for the smoke and terrain. There are smoke inhalation rules handled via the exhaustion levels. There’s locked doors to deal with. There are fire-immune zombies to deal with. And, of course, there’s the trapped wizard. Putting out the fire is also handled, including a bucket brigade.

He’s done a good job by layering things to make the 90 second adventure an interesting little problem to solve. The multiple obstacles, the appeal to common techniques are all good. He’s also got a series of maps showing how the fire spreads minute after minute. Maybe a summary sheet of the rules, in a less verbose context, along with the fire spread map, all on one page, would have been nice. Still, it takes the concept of the “all session long fight” to a place that is WAY more interesting thAn it was in 3e or 4e.

It’s a decent little ENCOUNTER if you can get past the little issues and make the timer better understood. It’s also 25 pages for a single encounter, and the beginning of a new adventure path. I get that people expect a certain page length, but how far can you stretch things? 25 pages at least …

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages and doesn’t show you anything of the adventure, making it absolutely worthless. I don’t care about the fucking art or backstory, I care to get a preview of the content I’m actually buying to use: the encounters. 


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/281612/A-Mishap-of-Ill-Portent?1892600

Posted in 5e, No Regerts, Reviews | 4 Comments

Annihilation Rising

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Bryce Lynch 
By Lloyd Metcalf
Fail Quad Games
1e/5e
Level 5

Monsieur Nerluc clings to the local mountainside. Villagers tell frightened children that the monstrous form of earthen stone is just a natural rock formation. It’s a lie they’d like to believe themselves. Monsieur Nerluc is, in fact, the lord of all tarasques, and strange cultists seek to waken him. If they do, his age-old toothache will begin to throb, and he’s going to be horrendously angry.

This sixteen page linear adventure is everything one comes to expect from a 5e adventure and nothing as one would expect from an OSR adventure. A quick 1e conversion cash grab, it’s full of skill checks, inspiration, low treasure and long read-aloud. Joy.

This is a drop-in adventure for use when you need a quick break from your game. Of course, it’s set in the designers home system, Altera, has a strong “French influence”, the setting features ley lines, and there’s supposed to be a bunch of tarrasques, with the one in this adventure being their king. So, you know, seamless drop in to your campaign world! Seamless doesn’t have to be generic but the more idiosyncratic your ideas the less seamless the adventure, obviously. Or, maybe, not obviously, since this adventure goes there.

I use the word “adventure” loosely. There is really no hook to speak of and it’s just some linear encounters after that. After meeting some hippy cultists on the road you go up a mountain trail to tail them, get caught in an avalanche, get a task from some griffons to kill a troll, get carried to the top by them, and fight the head cultist. Dishes Done!

There’s no real hook. There are a few rumors and an actual nice bit of advice to throw in some earthquakes leading up the adventure. I like that advice, the more continuous integration of adventures rather than obvious stand-along adventure modules … but I do note that it runs counter to the advice that this is a side-trek adventure to thrown in when you need a break, etc. But, the main point here is that there is no hook. There’s no reason for the party to follow the cultists they find at all. They seem happy and I guess it’s their talk of waking the tarrasque that is supposed to que the party? Do gooding? It’s VERy tenuous. 

The first cult encounter is another bright spot. Hippy cultists rather than the dark brood that most cultists in fantasy tend to be. Hippies are more like real life … which is scarier and more relatable. I think Hack ‘n Slash did a take on this in Hoard of the Dragon Queen. It was good then and is good now.

Read-aloud is LOOOOONG. The entire thing is low on loot for a 1e Gold=XP adventure. The text continually makes reference to skill checks, inspiration, and other 5e mechanics. Clearly, a 5e adventure that just had stats replaced in order to sell a few 1e copies as a cash grab. I LOATHE the cash grab side of conversions. They seemed to plague the earlier spate of reviews in the early days, as designers just slapped a 1e, OSRIC, or LabLord label on their two encounter Pathfinder linear suck-fest. 

Oh! Oh! And that Avalanche? You either die, get buried alive, or make 3 DEX checks for 6d6 damage each time. And if you fail one you have to make a second check or get thrown off the cliff. Is this adventure serious? 

Clearly, just a quick 5e stat-converted to 1e for cash. And a sucky 5e adventure at that. That avalanche is a doozy! It’s too bad, I was really looking forward to a more historical take on the tarrasque. Serves me right for having expectations. In fact, if I ever rename the blog it’s going to be “Misaligned Expectations” or something like that.

This is $4 at DriveThru. There’s no preview, otherwise you wouldn’t buy it.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/283071/Annihilation-Rising-1E?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 11 Comments

(Review) Saving Throw Fanzine

Posted on September 17, 2019 by Bryce Lynch

Jim Kramer is the guy behind Usherwood Publishing. Several of his adventures appear on my Best & Regerts list, including Arachnaphobia and most his Bone Hilt campaign series. He does EXCELLENT maps and, doing layout for a living, his layouts are top notch. He’s a behind the scenes guy, doing layout work for many things, including Knockspell and OSRIC. This 64 page fanzine was put together by several folks as a fundraiser to help with expenses after his third(!) brain tumor. I’m going to review the adventures. You should go pick this up because you’re not an asshole. And, also, because the adventures are quite good. Also, there’s a lot of OTHER content in it, beyond the adventures.

Sorcerer’s Stone – by Keith Sloan [No Level Given]

This five page adventure describes a dungeon with about forty rooms. On top of a hill is a ritual site where a cult gathers to … perform rituals and make human sacrifices. Underneath is the dungeon with a couple of evil priests (who think the cultists are amateurs) and a traditional “ogres, spiders, etc” dungeon. The map is good with decent complexity, same level stairs,pits, some water features and the like. Decent loops. Each room gets a bolded room title to orient the DM, a good touch. It is, essentially, a minimally keyed dungeon. “2. GUARD CHAMBER: This old guard chamber is empty.” and “A Carrion Crawler has made its way into this room.” tend to be the extent of the descriptions beyond stats and treasure. This does allow for about 24 rooms per page, but I would have preferred to see four or five more words, or, perhaps different words, in each room description. Instead of a carrion crawler moving in (and, as an aside, a lot of the descriptions are like that “X moved in”) I’d like to see something like a carrion crawler hanging from the ceiling, or munching on a goblin or something. A more active description. The cult activity outside is done well but could be organized better with bullets and bolding, and non-monster interactivity is a bit low. One more pass through to make the rooms active, clean up the outside, and insert a little more interactivity  and this would have been top tier.

Perladon Manor – by Gabor Lux – Levels 3-5

This delightful five page adventure describes fifteen rooms of a ruined manor over three-ish levels. Melan uses a single-column paragraph form, but arranges the sentence/text order well to put First Things First and then expand on them later, with good use of bolding. The encounters are great examples of the non-standardized style of D&D, with stabbing frescoes causing shadows damage, hypnotic patterns caused by magical loadstones, and inscriptions providing hints leading to more adventure. High interactivity and a fantasy vibe that is not constrained by the rulebooks provide a great adventuring adventure in a small page count and room count. 

The Tiled Labyrinth – Guy Fullerton – Levels (It’s got a minotaur)

This two page mini-dungeon is a labyrinth with about fifteen rooms. It provided three maps of the level and a small set of rules (close the incense burner) on changing from one map to another … which basically means the rooms stay the same and the hallways/doors switch layouts. It’s a clever idea for representing a labyrinth layout … minotaurs traditionally have a hard time in D&D having their lairs represented in anything other than “you’re confused at intersections” mechanics. Guys descriptions are good, with the details focused on player-oriented things and activities. Rich soil, copper watering cans, inset stone shelves … Guy slaps in the extra adjective/adverb to spruce up his descriptions well. One of the incense burners is a vented statuette of a heroic man holding decapitated bull head … with a lever to open/close the vents. Plus there’s a red meteoric long sword of sleek, angular design. Sweet! A good, if small, entry from Guy.

Lizard Man Lair – by Steve Smith Levels 5-7

This fourteen page adventure describes an outdoor lizard man lair. It’s complex, in a way these things usually are not. There are multiple factions, other race NPC’s, slaves, animals, varying terrain. Guidelines for several different approaches are offered up. It is, perhaps, more complex than can be handled in two-column magazine format, something that I sometimes thought in Dungeon Magazine. Meaning that it’s deep and complex but that the 2-column format doesn’t work well for this. I’m not saying it CANT, but that it would be a lot of work. As a standalone product it is both of limited scope (one lair) and better suited for a more leisurely layout/format that could be targeted to its complexity and depth. Good ideas in it.

The Mere Beneath by Guy Fullerton, Allan T Grohe jr and Henry Grohe – Level 5

This six page adventure details about 25 locations in a dungeon level with a large water feature. A great adventure in a fanzone full of great adventures. The map is interesting, complex, and offers on-map details to encourage creativity and help the DM. The wanderers are doing things. The creatures in rooms are doing things: bloody-faced from finishing a meal or tearing apart something. Writing is evocative with small little room text written so as to be more than the sum of their parts, inspiring the DM to greatness and to build upon them. Zones and multiple levels themes are well used. Creatures are just a bit from norm with ghouls and ghasts wearing bone masks. It all combines to give that non-standard OD&D vibe that I love so much. I might put this in my Darkness Beneath binder, as a sublevel from the waterfall in the Crabmen level. (And perhaps the level title implies a relationship to Darkness Beneath? The tone matches well.) A solid marriage of usability, interactive, and evocative.

This is $13 at DriveThru. Go get it!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/288750/Saving-Throw-fundraiser-fanzine-for-James-D-Kramer

Posted in Reviews, The Best | 11 Comments