tenfootpole.org

By Nickolas Brown
Five Cataclysms
OSR
Level 1-3

This is a Forbidden Barrow, where a corrupt, assassinated King and his aides are entombed, sealed off such that the world may forget them.

(It’s it 9am and I am drinking single malt, but I also seem to be making more mistakes than usual this morning. My apologies.)

This fourteen page adventure describes a tomb complex with about 25 rooms. Single-column, it gets a little hack-y towards the end. In spite of that it shows promise. Thought was given to formatting (in spit of the single column) and it does nice things with both the description and the monsters. I’d say it’s a fairly standard tomb explore, better than 90% of those written. Dude has potential.

What if you were competent, but just didn’t care … or maybe you got stuck on a problem (like … how to layout two-column.) That’s this adventure. It’s single column formatting is frustrating, but the rest of it is at least at a talented amateur level of quality. Not outstanding, but clearly better than the masses of dreck pumped out. The descriptions are one of two sentences, with a word of two bolded in them. The bolding is also a heading for follow-up information. Thus we get a very short, potentially evocative, description that has bolded references to follow-up text for the DM. This is a pretty good format. It’s easy to scan and locate information, because pf the bolding and the paragraph separation, while putting first things first. IE: the information the DM immediately needs. IE: the description. The room one description is:
01: A decrepit stairway winds downwards about 100’. The stairs are as stone slabs set into the walls, many of them crumbling or broken away. If you’re not careful, you could lose your footing.

The next heading, separated by a line of whitespace, is …
“Careful – (It takes a full turn to …”

Thus we get a short little description first, the first thing the DM needs for the room, in this case. Then a pointer to follow-up information.

The descriptions could be a little stronger. There is clearly an attempt to do something interesting, but I think it falls down and/or is not as strong as it could be. Once you’ve got a decent draft it can be rough to go back and spend 15-30 minutes on each room description, but it can really pay off. It’s the kind of perfectionism that bumps an ok description in to a great evocative one. In this case, tnone-careful people can fall down the stairs, taking from 1d6 to 10d6 damage … maybe warranting a few different word choices up front to better communicate the nature of the stairs.

I like the monsters in this, or some of them at least. A gibbering ghost, an acidic convulsing mound of skeletons. Someone tried a bit harder than usual. New creatures put the fear of the unknown in to the players, and in a gold=xp/exploration game that’s a key element. Then again “an armed and armored wight with a greatsword!” is not the soul of evocative writing, nor is “charred skeleton.” A word or two extra, with better word choice, again would have added a lot. There’s also some unusual attack modes, like a skeleton that writes in a book and the party takes the damage he describes. Nifty.

The encounters are above average, for the most part. It’s range of the old tropes and a few new things. The crumbling bridge is a classic, and I seem to never get tired of it. (Nor to players? I don’t know why.) As the tombs of the evil bads, propre, are reached it does degenerate a bit in to a hack-a-thon. A couple attack immediately, others have to clamber up. This is in contrast to the beginning sections where the party usually has to fuck with something before they stir up the undead. It IS the big bad though, so, perhaps we can be forgiven. The skeleton forces do get a little same-y after awhile, even though they all tend to have unique powers. “Another skeleton?”

This does raise an interesting point: how to judge an attack on a pre-animated undead. You know the mummy is gonna rise/the skeleton guard will animate. You launch a premeditated attack. How to adjudicate it? I tend to allow the party to disrupt the undead ahead of time,

It’s a decent little adventure if you are looking for something mostly straightforward and simple but with creatures that are non-standard. A little work on the writing to make it more evocative and the single-column nature would make it better. Throwing in more twists and a slightly more neutral adventuring environment (which I think speaks to creativity and a different mindset) would have made it even better. Still in all, better than most.

This is $2 at DriveThru. Alas, there is no preview. Bad publisher! No cookie for you!https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/248651/The-Forbidden-Barrow?affiliate_id=1892600

By M. T. Black & Richard Jansen-Parkes
Self Published
5e
Levels 1-2

Yegor Bonecruncher is the most ferocious hill giant in the land. When he begins terrorising the small village of Frickley, the inhabitants have only one hope – the legendary warrior, Jahia Giantslayer. The PCs undertake a dangerous trek through the High Forest to find her, battling wild fey magic all the way. But can Jahia live up to her own legend?

This fourteen page adventure features the party taking a (very short) wilderness journey to find a retired adventurer, in order to fight a hill giant.You get two or three fights, plus the hill giant fight, in addition to a couple of persuade rolls. It’s (generally) not offensive. The publishers blurb notes that the designer is critically acclaimed. That’s one strike against it out of the gate.

Rather than focusing on the absurd power creep in 5e, I will instead note that a portion of this adventure focuses on getting the villagers to stay and fight instead of running away. Abstracted, the giant will start down 36HP if they do, and then their arrows will do 15 points a round to him. (I guess no firing in to melee penalties in 5e?) Getting the farmers to stay knocks the giant down 30 hp and getting the hunters to stay knocks him down by about 15 points a round. Best case, that leaves him about 30 hp to go. No unreasonable for a party of 1’s, especially if the retired adventurer is recruited, since she absorbs one giant attack a round for four rounds and does a further 15 points a round to him. This reveals two things. First, this is really a social adventure. Recruiting the farmers and hunters, as well as the adventurer, is critical to the success of the adventure. There are some throw-away words to getting the villagers to help, but I felt that the text could have been clearer on this point … the party needs to understand the importance of getting them to help, otherwise they can’t make meaningful decisions about it. Yes, it IS mentioned, but it feels abstracted when first brought up. Second, it harkens back to the time when you bought hirelings and henchmen with you to the dungeon. Getting a big ass group together to fight the monsters does more damage to them and makes it less likely YOU will be targeted. No one ever brings enough people with them, and abstracted hirelinelig/henchmen in combat rules should be a thing.

Suggested hooks are: your father dies and you go back home to your village. Ug. All adventurers are orphans for a reason, so the DM can’t fuck with their families. This is a perfect example of bad hook writing. Multiple half-column read-alouds make me grown out loud on the quality of the writing. Overwrought. “… where farmers and hunters share gossip over a flagon or two or ale and the odd bowl of mutton stew.” It’s a fucking generic fantasy inn. You’ve done nothing to it to make it interesting. Just say its a fucking inn and don’t make us wade through the failed novelist text. And you know, there’s nothing like intro read-aloud text that has the words “Suddenly you hear shouts up ahead …” Every. Fucking. Time. It’s like there’s a template these people use called “Bad 5e Adventure Writing.”

Beyond all of this garbage is some dubious advice out roleplaying. Yes, it does mention that you should have the players roleplay their persuade attempts instead of just rolling the die. I fondly recall DM’s a 4e con game once where, when I asked this, one of the players said ‘Ug, your one of THOSE dm’s …” Yes, I am; we’re playing D&D and not Warhammer minis. In spite of this advice, though, the designer then goes about fucking things up. You MUST persuade. You can’t bribe, or intimidate, or do other things. Those are all auto-fails. Bull. Shit. First, I’m not sure its ever ok to have hidden rules. “Haha! Jokes on you! I had hidden rules and you fail now because you didn’t read my mind!” But, more than that, Fuck you for deciding in advance how the party has to play this out. Let me intimidate or bribe people. What fucking difference does it make? It’s not your fucking story, it’s the players. If they want to bribe people then who cares? Just tell them the farmer is very proud, give them disadvantage maybe, or adjust the combat potential at the end with some morale pretext.

But, all is not bleak. The main NPC”s have some summary boxes that are easy to find. WAY too long, but still, I appreciate the effort. Less text than a half-column each would have made it easier to roleplay the major players all at once and keep track of them. So, hearts in the right place, just totally fucked by implementation. There are nice notes though, like a farmer embellishing a story and his brother vouching for him that give the DM good cues on adding flavor to the otherwise boring overwrought text. Likewise an encounter or two have some interesting things going on, like a harpy luring the party up a boulder to fall to their deaths.

The hook doesn’t really finish till page six (unless you count the village asd the adventure, which you could, given the persuade rolls.) There’s only a couple of wilderness encounters, since the hermits hut for the adventurer is only a couple of hours away. Those tend to be half page affairs, for simple things like “a fallen log” or “crossing a river on slippery stones.”

This is, essentially, an adventure written for ten years olds. It’s not meant to be, but its so simplistic to give that effect. I don’t mind basic, and its short and simple enough that you can almost keep the entire thing in your head … for better or worse.

This isn’t a terrible adventure. Most of the bullshit can be ignored. Some additional text to liven up the final fight would have been a good addition, but, whatever. It’s $2 and its not the great steaming pile of shit most 5e adventures seem to be.

This is $2 at DMsguild. The preview is only two pages long. You get to see the long read-aloud as well as the “start the adventurers off immediately with a fight!” bullshit and how its implemented THIS time.
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/195471/Giantslayer–Adventure

By Johan Noor
Stockholm Kartel
LotFP
Level 3

Gruzx the Ever Watching – the infamous villain of the lands – has vanished. Howls and cries seem to come from the old tomb. And now everyone is complaining about bad eyesight? Best tie your shoes and grab your sword, for things are about to get messy!

This twenty page adventure features an eleven room dungeon straight out of the Weird Fantasy genre. More DCC-ish than LotFP torture, it has shapeless monsters, interdimensional beings, and spooky ghosts. Terse and evocative, it only sometimes engages in text padding. It’s a nice little dungeon.

The conceit here is that the baddies are researching true vision, so everything is a little off, visually. Blurry and so on, which allows for your other senses to kick in. This allows for a very read-aloud that is just an impression. Here’s one: “Cold metal, dust and sound of chains, stench of a sweaty fat man. Mad howls.” That, my friends, is the room with The Evil One in it. You know, He Must Not Be Named, etc? It’s a cute twist and a way to reference a former baddie in the campaign/world.

Further, he’d really like to be freed and could reward you. Also, the baddies need help with their True Sight and would be happy to reward you for that. Also, there’s a vampire ghost who could probably set up up with a nice keep in the ghoul lands. Also the spirits of the people in the tomb (this is a former tomb complex) are pissed at all the intrusions and may team up with you. It’s not exactly factions, and it would be hard to call any of them “good” or “not hostile”, but there are certainly opportunities to talk to just about everything in the adventure that has a brain. I SO get off on this shit. Adventures are SO much more interesting when you can talk to a creature. Sure, go ahead and stab it because its evil or you want the treasure, but talking adds delicious temptation and if that’s not the soul of DM pleasure then I don’t know what is.

The map is ok. Simple, but with notations on it. There are two versions and, IMO, the art heavy one is better than the computer generated one. Both have quite clear text and notations on them to give the DM hints of what’s to come . I really appreciate this, it helps with look-ahead environmental stuff, like sounds, light, etc.

The writing is pretty short and easy to read and scan. It DOES engage in fapping about though. Histories and purposes that get in the way. Here’s the intro to room one: “When the Freak Freaks turned the old tomb into their laboratory, the dead spirits were enraged and confused.
All their frustration and despair merged to form a shapeless, ghastly being – an emotion brought to unlife: Despair in ghostly form.” Or a section describing what the freaks do with their barrels full of vampire ashes. We don’t really need that shit.

It also engages in a secret door description fetish. I usually see this sort of thing with traps. Someone thinks they need to exhaustively describe how the trap works, and goes on for paragraphs doing so. Secret Door Fetish is a related DSM, but focuses on how to open the secret door. I don’t mind a little detail, a curtain, a paper-mache wall, etc. But let’s not go overboard. Hearing a click in another room, or down the hall, is a nice effect but … “Push one of the many stones in the northern wall, followed by pressing another stone only a meter away. An audible Click! is heard. You can now push the secret door on the southern wall – a heavy, cumber­some slab of stone …” goes a little too far for my tastes.

The treasure can bring the freaky, like a skull that can scout ahead for you, but lies frequently. (Mort?)

It’s a decent little adventure. A little short for my tastes.

This is $5 at Lulu. It being Lulu, there is. Of course, no preview.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/johan-nohr/the-unseen-vaults-of-the-optic-experiment/paperback/product-23633723.html

By Jonathan Nelson, Serena Nelson, Jensen Toperzer
AAW Games
5e
Level 1

Young Joylene Crumb always felt that life on a farm wasn’t for her… but with her adoptive father missing and rumors of a black dragon ravaging the countryside, is she really ready to run off on an adventure? Who are we kidding, of course she is, with the help of three unusual companions!

This 65 page adventure is a gimmick one-shot that uses 5e rules. It emulates the text-based/point-and-click computer adventure games. I can see it being an interesting experience as a one-shot for folks looking for something different, but it is, essentially, not an RPG. Or, maybe, it pushes that definition just about as far as it can go. In any event, while it does a decent job providing a resource key for the DM, it also muddles the main text by using paragraph exposition.

There are these little gimmick games called Parsley. One person emulates the computer in a text adventure and everyone else takes turns giving the computer commands. You explore the poincrawl, going back to pick things up to overcome challenges, and so on. The Parsley player follows a simple outline and comes up with clever things to say for successful and unsuccessful actions. This adventure is similar to that, except there are four player characters and a DM and each player has a pre-gen PC, as one would expect in a standard RPG. There is a pointcrawl map with about 21 “rooms.” Some location exits are blocked until you perform an action, like giving someone an object you found elsewhere. Doing this, you work your way through the adventure. The pre-gens provided are archetypes, like a comical pooka, a werebear proving himself, a housecat, and the little girl folk hero.

All in all, maybe an interesting parlour game for a con or other one-shot. The locations are generally one per page, so they are easy to find. The items, when found, are cross-referenced to the location and page where they are used, and on the page where they are used the are cross referenced to the page that they are found. There’s also a master item index at the rear that summarizes all of the objects and their locations and uses … although it could have been spread over fewer pages. Both the one location per page and the item cross-reference show an understanding of providing the DM the tools they need to run the adventure. The adventure, proper, is a little whimsical, heavy on folklore tropes, with the touches of nostalgia that will be charming when playing a throwback sort of thing like this. Find the needle in the haystack, literally, for example.

Two issues arise. First, the game uses ability checks to find some objects. BAD. DC19 to find the needle in the haystack. Or a spot check to find a rusty key that you don’t know exists. The advice given, in the case of the key, is to just move it somewhere else. This is all bad design. The fun of an adventure should not be abstracted to a dice roll. The party knows there’s a needle in the haystack. They should roleplay to find it. That’s where the fun is. A “roll to continue the adventure” check is never a good idea, and this adventure does that over and over again.

Further, the adventure muddles the DM text. Important information appears deep in paragraphs, that don’t always let you know within the first few words that this the right place to look. Far better to bullet point the information or edit the paragraph to make it far clearer, immediately, that this is the paragraph you are looking for. As is, it uses a more conversation style with too much “after this this shoos the group out. She wishes them luck but only since itll save our skins …” etc.

It’s a cute idea. I find the DM text too much of a pain to deal with, though, to want to run it. Or, rather, I’m partially inclined to run it but I won’t because of the DM text.

This is $13 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages, but it does not show you any of the locations. As such all you get to see is the usual bullshit into stuff with no idea of what to expect of the actual content.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/235454/5E-Heir–Back-Again?affiliate_id=1892600

By Cory Mann
Horror Module Publishing
5e
Level 1

Deep in the heart of the forest, there is rumour of an underground temple forgotten by the ages, built for a god long dead. You have been tasked by a small town with trying to find out if there is any merit to the rumblings of the temple reawakening and followers flocking to it. Do you and your party have what it takes to delve inside the deepest recesses of the inescapable dungeon?

This is a 29 page adventure that mostly describes a five level dungeon with about thirty rooms in it. It means well and is better than the usual 5e fare, but makes some pretty basic mistakes. Still, it offers a hint of exploration, and the elements that made D&D popular to begin with: wonder.

What if the rumors weren’t true? You know, the villager have rumors of a temple in the jungle, the party shows up, finds the temple, and its just a ruin, abandoned? Adventure over! 🙂 But , anyway …

Ok, villagers are under attack nightly. You go there to make your name. The first night the village comes under attack and you go find the goblin attackers the net morning, in a ruined dungeon/temple, and then explore the five levels until you reach the bottom and some spirit dude who needs put to rest. Less linear than most 5e dungeon far, it calls the various levels “Acts”, indicating that someone has either never seen a real dungeon or is pandering to a market that expects things in acts. Anyway …

You can’t get in to town. In spite of asking for help, they have a guard in front of the gate that won’t let you in. You’re not given stats for her, so I guess a stabbing is out of the question, as is sneaking in. No, it’s made clear you need to describe yourself and make a DC 10 check to get in. This is a classic no-no; It’s a roll to continue. Some trivial challenge blocks your path but you have to roll to get past it. What happens if you fail your roll? You don’t get to play tonight? No stabbing stats, no sneaking in details … I guess nothing happens and we all go home? No, obviously that’s not what is going to happen. The DM is gonna fudge something and the game will go on. Then why does the roll exist? Why roadblock the adventure? It shows a basic lack of understanding of adventure design. Better, FAR better, to just let the party in and make the roll contingent on how they are treated, rewarded, or some other criteria. Or, not have it all. Just roleplay and let them in. “Please help us! We’re dying here! One more night and we won’t make it and we’ll all be dead!” … “But please jump through these 12 hoops first and agree to these 99 thesis …” Sometimes, D&D villages get what they deserve. Remember people, your choice for Beadle is important! Anyway …

The town, while unrealistic, have a good outline of things you can learn in the inn, as well as a good NPC summary; what they know and do son. It all fits in about a column and is organized well. WHich can’t be said for the rest … You learn of a ranger on the edge of town who can tell you where the temple is. But his details are located in an event called “The Fire” in which a building burns down at night. The whole thing is short enough that it doesn’t really matter … but any longer and it WOULD. It points to a lack of understanding of formatting and organization.

The core of the adventure is a five-level dungeon, with goblins, traps/puzzles and a few undead. It starts with goblins and some hoblins, moves to some puzzles/traps, etc, and then on to some undead at the bottoms. The whole “corrupted good guy” tomb thing again.

The encounters are not all bad. SLeeping goblins to take advantage of. Several puzzle like rooms. They’re not necessarily great ether. An illusion of a red dragon kill everyone, for no reason other than “because.” A pillar that allows you to float is in the dungeon explicitly so you can cross a pit trap … with lots of words about the players thinking creatively, etc. It’s trying, but resorting to things for no other purpose than doing them is not a great way to design. Empty rooms don’t drone on and read-aloud is kept to manageable size … mostly.

But …

It’s lacking core creativity. As such, its little more than a random dungeon design with some rando monsters that is expanded upon with more text. Goblins sleep in beds. Latrine rooms are included. Read-aloud indicates that the creatures see and they attack, etc. Stat blocks (big & bloated, of course) inconsistently appear in the text. One room has four coffins with duergar in them. Alive, as it turns out. WTF? In later rooms the dungeon becomes a test, and doors slam shut when you go in rooms, and there are challenges to prove yourself, etc. Descriptions describe exits. Things like the red dragon illusion pop up … for no other reason than … well, there is no reason cause there are no reasons. What reason ca… anyway …

Even something with these issues, though, is better than the usual bloated text plot things at is usual for 5e/Pathfinder. There is something TO this. It may be not great, but you comprehend it.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview doesn’t show you any of the core, the dungeon. The town entry is there, as well as the inn rumors, and the fire/chase events. Essentially, everything BUT the core of the adventure. Not cool. But the inn summary with the bullets and NPC boxing is well done and you can see that.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/245067/Iriestines-Order?affiliate_id=1892600