tenfootpole.org

By Ashley Warren
Self Published
5e
Level3

A recent archaeological expedition in Icewind Dale has uncovered a remarkable discovery: the Spine of the World mountain range is, in fact, the actual spine of a great giant.  The discovery confirms an ancient legend, that giants as tall as mountains once roamed the Forgotten Realms.
Lead archaeologist Silja Stengravar knows the truth. Centuries ago, a lich, threatened by the giants’ ancient elemental power, banished their race to an abandoned planet known as Kaiva. The lich was defeated, but its curse remains, protected by its minions in the heart of Garagai Mountain. Held captive to the curse, the giants are suspended in time, unable to roam free and claim Kaiva as their own.  Silja’s discovery has summoned the portal to Kaiva. Will adventurers brave the perilous journey through the hostile and awe-inspiring planet to destroy the curse and reawaken the giants?

This seventeen page adventure has about six pages of actual content. Laid out in three scenes, the party travels through a hollow mountain, that is actually a giant, kills some shit, and then runs away as the giant they are inside of starts to move again. Ignoring the scene-based structure and the “archeology” bullshit, the organization of the adventure is a nightmare. It could be worse, but the lack of content and the free-flow organizational style hide a simple linear adventure.  

First, nice cover! That’s the kind of place adventurers should be dying to go to! The touch of the fantastic this brings to the adventure is wonderful. Of course, the players don’t actually get to see that, since the place is supposed to look like a mountain and not a giant. Or … does it? The advice to the DM is to do whatever you want, make it look like a mountain or like a giant like the cover shows.

This then is our first major point of divergence: the role of story & the DM. This adventure is firmly on the side of “DM as storyteller.” Want it to be a mountain? Make it a mountain. How long should the players have once the mountain/giant wakes up in order to escape from it? It’s up to the DM, as they control the pacing. Should the players be trapped on the other planet if they fail? It’s up to the DM since they control things. Somewhere around 2e the game shifted. Instead of an emergent story that develops around the party the style changed to the DM as storyteller. I find this hollow. In it lies a thousand sins. The players no longer have agency in their own action. The rules won’t let you die anymore and neither will the DM because their “story” has something going on. The baddie must escape. The artifact must trigger. Blach. So what? Someone dies and they make another character. They don’t escape and they get to have adventures on another planet. Or they have an entire campaign inside a giant. Or any of a thousand other possibilities. But it’s the players who have the action token and not the DM. This whole DM as Storyteller thing has Giovanni Chronicles in it. A hollow & empty style of play that can never be meaningful because there was never anything at risk or any chance to change the world in anyway. The plot says that at level 20 the evil god gets summoned, so whatever you do is meaningless. It’s going to happen 19 adventures from now. Just pull out your phone and play some Bubble Bobble.

So, this adventure is a part of a playstyle I abhor, and can make a logical well reasoned argument as to why it’s bad. Let’s accept for the moment that someone responds with the No-Accounting-For-Taste “But That’s the Way I Like To Play.” What then?

Then we fall back to Ye Olde Rule-e One-e: the only purpose of the adventure is to help the DM run it at the table. Does this do that in any meaningful way? No.

The data is laid out in some weird paragraph form. Inside of each “scene “are some bolded subheadings. Each subheading with have a couple of paragraphs and the various encounters are laid out in that text. There is no real organization other than “if you read the entire thing from start to finish then you will see the order of things as thing one comes before thing 2 or thing 3 in the text of the paragraph.” This is terrible, and is now the second or third time I’ve seen it. I don’t get it AT ALL. What’s the point of this? Is room/key now not being done at all? Is it impossible to just bullet point out important information, or number it, or do ANYTHING other than just list it in paragraph form? Again, the DM is scanning the adventure text at the table. They need to location the information quickly. Burying it in a paragraph is not the way you do that.

There’s a couple of inset boxes early on, when the “archeologist” is talking to the party. (This i, I think, the only time inset data is used. Or anything other than just paragraph data transfer.) The first is some … flavor text(?) about the archeologist. The second is a point of data about a curse. The inset about the curse it good. If I’m the DM, looking at that page, I can immediately find the curse data. But the archeologist flavor text? What’s the point of that? Their personality & looks are would have been much better served to have been highlighted instead of being buried in the sentence data in the paragraph before the insets.

I can quibble with the other choices. An archeologist wants your help. Why? Why not a wizard? Do we have to live in a world with archeologists and museums and shit? Why not embrace the fantasy? Easy enough to fix, they’re a wizard now. But there’s other things. There’s some note about how killing a wolf is an evil act if it hasn’t attacked yet. And it then attacks. What? Hang on there. Uh, no, it’s not an evil act. You mean it’s an evil act the way YOU play D&D. In my world it’s not. This kind of DM enforced morality garbage is a blight on the game.

This is a low page count low content adventure. It is no way lives up to the cover, even given the “run away to escape the giant” gimmick ending.

The designer runs an RPG Writers Workshop and appears to be an author. The content of the workshop appears to be of two types. The first section appears to be things you might see in any writers workshop. Storyboard, moodlists, outlining, creating villains, NPC’s, etc. The second part is about layout, editing, publishing, etc.

I haven’t gone through this workshop, but the agenda leave me with a raised eyebrow. Adventure writing is not similar to story writing AT ALL. Adventure writing is technical writing. You are trying to transfer information out of the designers head and on to paper in such a way that it enters the DM’s head that they can use it to run the adventure. All in about the three seconds you get when they glance down at the page. I don’t see that in this workshop. Joyce may have been a great writer but if they wrote a D&D adventure in the style of Wake then it would be a disaster. First, technical writing. Then evocative writing detailing interactive encounters with the POTENTIAL for combat. D&D is about interactivity and too many designers confuse combat for interactivity.

It is my great hope that the great masses of humanity who know only the WOTC/Paizo echo chambers do one day get exposed to the better writing & formats os the inside & OSR scene. There are certainly a huge pile of garbage in that community also, but they seem to be more actively thinking about these things, and experimenting with formats, etc, than the WOTC/Paizo crowd. The major publishers are really doing a disservice to everyone by not caring about information theory in their own products. People see it from the the official publishers and think that’s the right way to do it. There’s no right way. Some are easier than others, but there are many paths to good design. The WOTC/Paizo garbage is not it though. These designers get all these 5-star reviews and accolades, never knowing what’s over the next hill

This is Pay What You Want at DMSGuild with a suggested price of $1.

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/232047/Sleeping-Giant-Mountain?affiliate_id=1892600

By Curt Carbonell
Self-published
5e
Levels 5-8

It’s the dead of winter in the High North. People are going missing, rumors abound of savage creatures in the wilderness, and the outpost town of Jotnar’s Folly is teetering on the brink of starvation. You must travel to the frozen foothills of the Spine of the World and put a stop to whatever is causing this suffering. Will you be able to survive the freezing temperatures, solve the mystery, and defeat the threat in time to save the town from certain destruction?

This 22 page adventure has the party trekking through bitter cold (environmental hazards) and meeting some gnolls before hacking a frost giant and his pet remorhaz. Pruning back the writing and some tweaks to the organization/support information would go a long way to making this an inoffensive adventure. At its heart it’s just a boring old set-piece battle with the added complication of a gnoll parlay.

Set in a far northern town, the children don’t drink lemonade but they do get hacked down. You pick up a couple of quests in town, go to a farmstead to find some dead bodies, find some gnolls at a campsite that you might be able to roleplay with, and then fight a frost giant and his pet.

This adventure tries hard. You can see the designer trying to do the right thing and then kind of leaving out what they needed to succeed. I’m going to assume it’s because of a lack of exposure to good design principles.

The adventure is set in the frozen north and the environment is supposed to be a big part of the adventure. There’s a little section at the beginning on sights and sounds that tries to help the DM introduce some atmosphere. Crunching snow, glare off the snow, etc. It’s got some nice ideas in it. But, what the adventure needs, is reinforcement of those ideas. Including that section in front kind of sets the DM’s mood while they are doing their initial read through, setting up the lens by which the further encounters can be viewed through. The encounters, proper, though need this data reinforced. The data should be repeated, not word for word but elements of it, in the various encounters. When you reach the ruined homestead a few words, under the title, like [crunchy snow, glare off the featureless plain] would have done wonders to help the DM set the mood WHILE RUNNING IT. Remember, the adventure needs to be focused on running it at the table. So while the initial sights & sounds are ok, the DM needs that brief environmental data reinforced in the actual encounter that they are looking at. The DM’s attention is drawn a hundred different way while running the game, helping them recall is a good thing. But, you have to do it without getting in the way. Hence the suggestion of the “feelings” under the encounter title.

Likewise the adventure tries to set up a situation where travel between the various encounter sites has an element of the environment in it. Face a blizzard or hide in a cave? Go over a frozen lake or maybe go the other way to have a monster encounter? These little things have a number of problems. First, the table they are presented on only has three options, driven by a survival check. Given the multiple travel options it’s certainly possible that the same one could happen more than once. It would have been better to tweak this in to something else, like removing the check. This ISN’T messing with player agency because of my second point. It’s not always obvious what the consequences of the players decisions will be. For the decision to be meaningful the players must understand the nature of the decisions they are making. Going over the lack will reduce time but it looks treacherous. The other direction looks safer but maybe has monster spoor. Or you can see a blizzard in the distance, or something like that. They need to know that the blizzard is coming and/or that it will delay them. Otherwise the choice is random and you take the players agency away, things just happen to them. The adventure is not necessarily doing this on purpose but it doesn’t make it clear. Finally, the linkages between the hazards are weak. It mentions, for example in the “Rock and Hard Place” line on the survival table that the party might have to survive the weather and then has a section about a column away called Surviving the Weather. That’s generic, and could apply to the entire adventure when it’s MEANT to apply to this one line on the survival table. Rock & A hard place on the table could be called “Blizzard or Yeti?” and the blizzard referred to as “Event: Blizzard” or something like that. By being cute with the names you make the comprehension harder for the DM.

Read aloud is contained to just one entry per “major section” but can be long, and, as long time readers know long read-aloud, being more than 2-3 sentences are bad. Instead, rely on bullet points or other techniques to rely information to the DM so they can easily find it and convey it. Further, flowery read-aloud is almost always bad, in general, and is in this adventure as well. “Arrows stick out of the snow like frozen flowers.” is not good writing. Evocative writing is a good thing to strive for but metaphor is almost always a bad idea. In my experience it almost always comes off as groan & eye-rolling worthy.

It’s handles survival mostly through the 5e exhaustion check mechanism. This is a decent way to include it but not focus on the tedium of outdoor survival, like so many adventures do in the heat or cold. It would have been better, though, to include a brief summary of the exhaustion rules and maybe some modifiers, etc, in the adventure, maybe on the last page or something, to make the DM’s referencing it during play easy to find. I don’t want to go hunting in the PHB or leave the page open in the hardback during play. Remember, the designer should be focused on helping the DM run the adventure during play at the table.

But, to that end, a little travel table is provided between sites showing distances and typical number-of-days travel time. That’s the kind of helpful data I’m looking for, so well done!

It’s got a couple of other nice things it’s trying to do also. The mayor is being blackmailed by a protection racket, leading to some of the hooks, and provides better depth than usual to what would normally be a throw-away hook. That’s great. It’s exactly what I’m talking about when I ask people to think about their hooks just a little more He needs the lost protection money back, and it also leads to potential further adventure at the end of the adventure. Likewise, there’s a cowardly sheriff, a hero in his own tale, that has caused some trouble. This is a non-trivial element of the adventure, as he has killed a gnoll and they can be, potentially, allies of the party if the sheriff and gnoll tension can come to a end. The sheriff thinks he did the right thing. The gnolls are pissed he killed one of them. They are not necessarily hostile but potentially hostile. That can be a good encounter, with no enforced right or wrong to it. [The gnolls come off a little too do-gooder for me, like humans wearing gnoll costumes. There could be some more nuance there but its painfully easy to see where the designer is going.] The entire idea of the sheriff and gnoll group, with factions in the gnolls, is a great idea. It just needed some more work.

Folks will recall that Rients suggests shaking up the campaign, and the giant could very well fuck up the town. That could be GREAT!

It also tries to do something interesting with hooks. Four locations are described in town, each with a hook related to the adventure. This goes a long way to the concept of leaving out the shit don’t matter. Four ways in to the adventure, or further nuance to it, and thus four locations described in the town. That’s focus. The NPC’s are left to the appendix to describe, and I’d prefer a couple of keywords in the description to riff off of, but, at least they are short-ish.

The DM text tends to the medium and unfocused side of the spectrum, needing more whitespace/bullets/pruning back to enable focus on what matters when running it. Finally, it’s got a trigger warning at the start noting that some innocent people get killed as a part of the adventure. Uh … Seriously? If anything I’d say it doesn’t go far enough in this area. Showing why a bad guy is evil, instead of telling us, is a key way to motivate the party. I’m not looking for graphic depictions, but the current descriptions are abstracted enough that they don’t bring anything/much to the table.

Finally, This is really just a three encounter adventure. Go to homestead and find some bodies and the sheriff. Go to campsite and find more bodies and the gnolls and hack them and/or roleplay. Go find frost giant and his pet and kill them. Three encounters in 22 pages, for $4, is not exactly “Participation Award” worthy. Yeah yeah, environmental encounters between the main ones. Whatever. I don’t wandering monsters in OSR adventures and I’m not counting Wandering Environment encounters here. Come to think of it, I’m not sure that, if you hack the gnolls down, there’s any way to figure out there’s a giant involved or where he’s going. It’s assumed, I guess, that the gnoll roleplay works out. Strengthening the “ought oh! The giants the bad guy!” part could be better. Or, maybe not, and you just let the giant fuck up the town. But that smacks of the designer saying “you better talk to the gnolls or else!” and that’s NOT good design.

For 5e it’s decent. But most 5e adventures are dreck. If instead its looked on as the initial effort of a first-time designer then there’s maybe a little hope in the future that they improve and bring us good things in their coming products.

It looks like this was produced from an RPG writers workshop the designer attended. I can’t say that it was perfect, but this one did come out better than most first time efforts. Maybe next week we’ll take a look at the workshop runners adventures. In any event, I do hope a lot of these 5e/Pathfinder designers expand their horizons and get out of their echo chambers. There is so much GREAT design work going on outside of the mainstream, and so little within 5e/Pathfinder. Broadening their perspectives would be great for these folks, if they can buck the emulation echo chamber trends.

This is $4 at DMSguild. The preview a good one, eight pages. You get to see the town and how the plot hooks are integrated in to the locations. You get to see the first two encounters (most of them anyway) and their read-aloud. The lack of NPC personality (it being relegated to an appendix) and the more conversation style of DM text that comes off as unfocused and hiding the details the DM needs.

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/266134/Blood-on-the-Snow?affiliate_id=1892600

by Jonathan Garland
Self Published
5e
Level 1

The Bell Wood has always been rumored to be a dangerous place, full of strange creatures and odd happenings. Timber from the wood is highly sought after for its reputed magical properties, so brave foresters sometimes dare the wood to harvest trees to finance their futures. But this time, people are dying. Loggers are vanishing, their mutilated bodies recovered from the undergrowth hours or days later. What has changed in the wood? Can anyone solve the mystery? And can they survive the investigation?

This twelve page adventure has the party looking for a womans missing lumberjack boyfriend while avoiding a cursed wood that is killing people. Not exactly a railroad, not exactly terse, both an outline and prescriptive. It’s a mass of contradictions and I suspect that, with a little work, the style it uses would be ok. If you think a four-hour adventure should be contained in four pages. Still, not odious, which is a compliment.

Let us imagine a barren desert with no features at all. It is rocky and hard to walk across. Right down the middle of it is a narrow path clear of rocks, easy to walk on, with water fountains every 3 miles. Do you have free will in this situation? If I write an adventure that does not force you to take the path, but doesn’t really support you in taking another path and make the easy path REALLY obvious, then what? That’s what this adventure is.

Show up in town. See a woman in a bar pissed off that he boyfriend is still missing after two months and learn of a series of murders in the woods. Then a barfight breaks out with lumberjacks, the guard shows up and arrests the party. Yeah, ok, you MIGHT be able to avoid the fight, but its supposed to happen. And the adventure specifically points out you could escape arrest, and to let the party if they do. (Imagine, having to write those words in an adventure, What a World! What a World!)

This thing telegraphs in every sense of the word except actually handing the party a piece of paper saying “MANFRED DID IT.” In the first place, the bar, you learn he used to date the Erin, the woman with the missing boyfriend. And in the second place, the jail, you learn he has a history of violence. He proudly shows you his axe with a notch in it (that later matches the notch in the boyfriends skull.) A sprite in the woods says “You big people always killing each other.” This is a railroad in every sense of the word even if it doesn’t use DM Fiat to keep things on track. Or, maybe, it’s so simplistic to be confused with one? Anyway.

It features trig blights and Galafanakis evil tree thing. What’s up with this shit? It seems half the 5e adventures I see have them in it? Are they the new kobolds?

“You killed someone last night” says the sheriff “Deaths, even in self-defence, are unacceptable. Get out of town.” Yeah? How about I stab you in throat 157 times? Seriously? We’re supposed to stand there and get slaughtered? Oh, they weren’t going to kill us? You can see the future now? You look like the sheriff and not a mother fucking sorcorer, sorry to mistake you. You know, it occurs to me that I may have a problem with authority figures in elf games.  Or, as I would say “so called authority figures.”

There’s long read-aloud at the beginning of each location and you would not be wrong if you made comparisons to a scene-based adventure format. The read-aloud tends to be describing a social interaction though, as if you just walked up on something happening. It’s also pretty well written, which I don’t think I’ve said more than three or four times?  It does a good job of communicating the social vibe going on. It’s still too long and the players are almost certainly going to be playing with their phones, but it’s not the overwritten fantasy drivil that is present in most read aloud. What’s that thing they say about character-driven movies?

I could also point out that the loggers in camp seem willing to talk to the party even if the party killed a few of them in the bar … at least I don’t thin I saw a few words of warning otherwise. It also commits the sin of “throw a few more blights at the party if they try to take more than a short rest.” Uh, No. We don’t play adversarially in D&D and the DM isn’t telling a story. Who cares if they rest?

I’m coming off negative here, but I want to mention more than a couple of posativies. It IS based around the relationships of people, which is a good thing, and relatable. Simplistic, but still, it comes through well. Information tat tha party can learn is relayed in bullet points so it’s easy to find. Further, the locations/scenes are set up in a way that adds just a little more. In the section on the logging camp it notes that the loggers, wagon driver, or cook knows the following … That’s the first time the cook and wagon driver are mentioned. It’s not much, but it adds just a little more detail to the camp other than “just loggers” and that’s the sort of thing a DM’s brain need to remind them to paint a full picture instead of a boring one. It does this in multiple scenes/locations.

This thing is simplistic but easy to follow for the most part. (There is some “paragraph” information presented that could be organized better.) It’s based around people, the bullets convey information well. It’s not really interactive, in any sense other than “talk to people a lot” and seems to rely on the “opening fight” crap advice that should have never been published. But, I would not stab my eyes out if handed this and asked to run it. High praise! (For new readers, yes, that actually IS high praise.)

I don’t know about the read aloud. Some of it is ok here AND its longer than it should be. Too bad. Yeah, I know you have to make things REALLY obvious in investigations, but, man, this is WAY obvious. From the first location/scene.

This is Pay What You Want at DMSguild with a suggested price of … $0! People who pay $0 are jerks, even if that is the suggested price. Give the dude a dollar, at least!

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/195963/Death-in-the-Wood