tenfootpole.org

By Walter J. Jones Jr.
New Realms Publishing
Generic

Your boots scrape off the bloodstained flagstones as you step into hall. Fluted columns rise to support a arched ceiling lost in the shadows. A scrape of leather on stone and a jangle of mail echoes off the walls as a mail-clad skeleton steps out from behind a column.

Well, fuck me. NOT an adventure. Not in my taxonomy.

This fifteen page “Adventure” is organized around a deck of cards. You print out a deck of locations, a deck of encounters, and a deck of treasures. You draw a room, roll for an encounter, and maybe a treasure. After experiencing about eight rooms you get to the boss, a harpy, and finish up the adventure. It’s straightforward, generic, and solo capable.

None locations. “Empty shelves line the walls and broken crates and tattered sacks litter the floor of this room.” or “Broken shelves and crates and toppled weapons racks litter the floor of this dusty room.” None monsters. Nine treasures.

Now that I have seen the adventure then the description makes sense. It says there are none cards of each. What I failed to comprehend, from the description, is that this is the ENTIRE adventure. A card driven “walk in to room, killa thing, move to next room” until you reach your eight room goal.

Man, I gotta pay more attention when buying.

NOT an adventure.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages and doesn’t really inform you that you are buying just a couple of card decks.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/237932/Universal-Adventures-Adventure-Module-EG1-The-Oracle-of-Basylthor?affiliate_id=1892600

By Paul Elkmann/Geoffrey O. Dale
Spellbook Games
1e/Portal to Adventure
Level 10+

“Oasis of Koessa is an adventure set on the Seventh Circle of Hell, the Desert of Fire, can be used as a projection of Hell into the Material Plane, or it can be used as an enchanted location in any remote hot desert. It can represent any of nine Oases found in the Desert of Fire. The Oasis is a dangerous and challenging location suitable for challenging higher-level Adventurers. The non-linear location contains eight significant structures which can be explored in any order, each with different challenges and opportunities. The centerpieces are the two large Pyramids and the dungeon inside a Sphinx statue.”

This 69 page adventure describes an oasis on the seventh circle of hell. It’s packed full of mummies and their minions. Like the blurb says, three dungeons, and extensive at that. It’s also a pretty textbook example of the mechanics of writing getting in the way the adventure. Wall of text. Detailed room descriptions. Hordes of creatures stuffed in rooms. It burdens my soul just thinking about it.

I am NOT in the mood for this thing this morning.

Let’s talk room descriptions. What’s the goal? As always: helping the DM at the table. More specifically, picking out the important stuff in the room and describing it in a way that the flavor is communicated by the text from the designer to the DM’s head … who can then attempt to send it on to the players. How does one accomplish this? There are several possible paths. One path which is NOT useful is the one that FAR too many adventures fall in to: describing the room in excruciating detail.

We the room it titled “Kitchen” then the DM can fill in the details; we know what a kitchen looks like. Maybe the room is titled “Clean Kitchen” or “Greasy Kitchen” or something else. The designer is leveraging the DM in communicating the vibe. They are then free to add to description things like “The master key is inside a loose chimney stone.” or “The grease makes the floor slippery and the rusty knife collection is stored on the low, open shelves …” The descriptions focus both on the evocative, to communicate the vibe well to the DM, as well as the mechanics of things actually useful to the adventurers.

Revisiting our kitchen example, lets follow where the contra example takes us. If we exhaustive list he contexts of the kitchen then what does that get us? Seven bowls, Six spoons (one bent), a 10’ by 11’ work surface with a knife cut in the upper right hand corner 1 foot from the left edge running parallel to the lower edge. Unless those elements are relevant to the adventure then they do nothing but clog up the text and distract the DM from from the evocative nature of the room and the mechanics of the party interaction with it. The seven bowls could be a clue … in which case it IS relevant to the adventure, if the party needs to know/would be helpful to know there are seven people using bowls.

Besides this exhaustive listing of room contents there is also the “where does the door go” commentary. “The archway to the west goes room 14, the kitchen.” Well, yes, that is what the map indicates ,,, s why does the text tell us that also?

This, along with poor formatting choices, can lead to wall of text issues. All of the text just runs together, visually, and your eyes glaze over.

Here’s an example of the text from room three of the funerary temple. This is one paragraph of six, with the entire thing taking up over a page of text.

“The room has arches to the Embalming Room, the Wrapping Room, and to the Entry Curtain. An 8 FT by 5 FT mahogany table on the western side of the room supports a large bright blue wooden sarcophagus which is sealed with a line of lead solder (requires a knife/scraper). A 50 inch bronze gong hangs in a black wood frame to the left of the table with a hook for the 30 inch clapper; sounding the gong has no immediate impact. Two 7 FT by 4 FT black granite altars are along the east wall, separated by 10 FT. An 8 FT diameter silver spider with 8000 GP diamond eyes is mounted on the north wall in front of one altar; an 8 FT di- ameter gold ram’s head with 12,500 GP ruby eyes and 14,000 GP ivory horns is mounted on the south wall. A 12 FT diameter circular brown-and-orange carpet is between the altars. Lit golden lanterns are to the north and south walls, spaced 5 FT apart.”

Are the dimensions of the table relevant? Is the spacing of the lanterns relevant? The size of the gong? I would assert that most of the text description is irrelevant, and that which IS relevant is boring. “A silver spider with diamond eyes” barely makes the grade.

And remember, that’s one paragraph of six. The adventure engages in this over and over again. Everything is just beaten to death, and then to a pulp. Seldom have I cared less about what I’m reading. Useless detail without writing to inspire.

This is $4 on DriveThru. The preview is about six pages and the last few give you an idea of what to expect in terms of writing. It’s not actual rooms, but it is indicative. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/189270/Oasis-of-Koessa?affiliate_id=1892600

By Shane Ward
3 Toadstools
Blueholme
Level 3

Halfway between here and there is a small roadside Inn. A weather worn wooden sign stands outside of the door “Adventurers wanted, apply within”. Weary from the road, you stand outside the Inn, smoke rises from the chimney promising a warm evening. The inside of the Inn is small and cozy, a set of stairs lead up to much needed beds. The small bar is decorated with old suits of rusted armour, a bookshelf with musty tomes and a large map of the countryside. The bar is empty save for a small gnome who is fast asleep at a table, smoke curls from his pipe.

I continue to be out of sorts. I’m hoping to settle back down come April.

This twelve page adventure details a ten room dungeon using five pages. It has a throwback quality, with room nearly its own little isolated thing. Not really evocative writing, but the DM text doesn’t overstay its welcome and the basic/nostalgia factor is high with this one.

Goblins hoot and holler while whipping prisoners chained to a wall. Smoke pours from under a doorway with figures inside dancing around a glowing orb. An old crone sites near a pool of bubbling black water. Zombies stand knee deep in purpleish slime tearing a body apart to feast upon. A troll slumbers in front of a door, with a large brass key around his neck. A stone well filled with black liquid sits under a terrifying mural drawn in feces and blood.

You know, I said the writing wasn’t evocative but the encounters sure as hell are. Just about each of the ten rooms features a little vignette, described in a sentence or two. These are basic encounters; they feel like bookcases that turn to reveal a secret passage or Harryhausen skeletons. Basic but iconic. That’s the main appeal of this adventure. There’s a charm to these encounters. Almost randomly strewn together, that just lends to the overall effect of mystery.

WTF is going on here? The gnome locks you in his basement after luring you there with rumors of treasure. Inside if a demon that trades the gnome longevity potions in return of victims willingly entering the dungeon.

Curses, weird potions, new magic items, +1 swords … the adventure has what you would expect from a basic Holmes adventure. The encounters capture the weird charm and iconic non-Tolkein/non-high adventure vibe from the early dungeoneering days. It’s easily worth $1 if you are in to such things, and could serve as a nostalgic one-shot.

This is PWYW at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $1. The preview contains the entire twelve pages of the adventure.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/234962/Dusty-Door?affiliate_id=1892600

The Ruined Abbey of St Clewd
Gavin Norman & Greg Gorgonmilk
Necrotic Gnome

I ended up with another magazine adventure to review, Wormskin #3. This twelve digest page adventure describes the surface level of a ruined abbey in the Dolmenwood. (The entire issue, and I suspect magazine, is devoted to the Dolmenwood setting.) Clearly written, and also clearly limited by its “just the surface ruins” approach. There’s not much content, which forces one to ask some hard questions. It’s also spooky as all fuck.

Let’s talk about “spooky as fuck” first. I seem to remember an old 3e SRD monster book called something like Nightmares & Dreams. It was full of horror themed monsters and did a great job bringing the creepiness to life. This does the same thing with one of its principal encounters. The Gloom is an undead creature formed from a bunch of dead crows. It collects things, like teeth or corneas. It’s a kind of tall skinny man in finery. Offering candy to children. Or encaged in an iron tree cage being freed by dumb kids. You can run in to some kids in this adventure, maybe playing in a very old graveyard. A graveyard with a bunch of open graves, freshly dug up. And the kids all have dirty hands … seems they’re charmed and have been stealing teeth for the Gloom. I’m just a hack reviewer and can’t get CLOSE to the creep that the adventure brings with regard to the Gloom or the children. It’s really well done.

I might also comment that the writing here is very clear. I’m been trying to figure out why and I can’t really put my finger on it. Maybe because it goes from “what the party sees first” to the general to the specific. It tends to focus on stuff that the party will be interested in, and thus directly on play at table rather than trivia (with a single fucking notable exception.) An evocative sentence that you might use when the party first shows up. A line of DM text explaining things. Another line of trap/damage/search mechanics. That’s what the entries all feel like … but I’m not actually sure that’s what’s going on. Whatever. I find the writing style quite effective.

The adventure also devotes 2.5 pages, a huge amount for a 12 page adventure (20%?) to a series of seven murals in the ruined church. It goes in to detail on each. Except for one, the last one, I can find no reason why it does this. It just seems to be trivia, and is completely different from the writing in the rest of the adventure, which is quite focused on actual play. Maybe it bears fruit in the next issue, which describes the underground level?

The whole thing comes off as a bit sparse. Oh, sure the Gloom/children thing is GREAT, but the rest of the level is essentially non-existent. A couple of different ways to find stairs down is about it, except for one hidden treasure. Everything is looted. The murals thing is a big miss, again, unless it pays off in the next dungeon level. Six locations, with two of them having four or five sub-locations. It seems a little sparse. IDK.

As a horror themed stand alone this should work. I’m just having problems reconciling the sparseness with my classical view of an “adventure.” It may be the episodic/zine nature just didn’t work well here and you need the second level for things to click. Or maybe I’m being nice,

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview shows nothing of the adventure,https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/187215/Wormskin-Issue-3?affiliate_id=1892600

Here’s the text from location #2, Graveyard. Something about this turns me off at first glance … the length, one paragraph, no bolding I’m pretty sure. But then, reading it … it seems perfectly suited to run. What the players see. What happens when they follow up. Mechanics. GREAT text organization.

“Crumbling stone walls — now sprawling with ivy and buckled by the intruding roots of looming yew and holly trees — surround the abbey’s graveyard, wherein lie the remains of several hundred monks of the lower orders (the more senior monastics were interred in the crypt beneath the chapel).A thorough inspection of the dates of the graves reveals that no one has been buried here during the last 350 years. It is also noticeable that many of the graves are in the process of being carelessly dug up. There is a 2 in 6 chance of one or more of the children described in area 3b being present in the graveyard during the day.”

The Tomb of Dagobert
by Matthew Evans
Mithgarthr Entertainment
5e
Levels 2-3

This five page adventure, with two “real pages, is a very simple nine room tomb complex stuffer full of undead. The terse writing style and ok hook are to be commended, but the writing is not evocative. It’s too simple to offer any value.

Skeletons. Zombies Ghouls. A spectre. A mummy. And then a bandit king when you come out. This seems a touch rough for 2nd level characters, in a linear dungeon. I don’t play a lot of 5e so maybe I’m wrong. Most tomb maps bother me anyway, because they tend to be simple. But when you combine it with a bunch of enemies you need to hack past it tends to bum me out. There’s no skill, and not much fun, in slogging through a linear map full of forced combats.

The writing is terse, for 5e anyway, and simple. Five zombies clamber out of their coffins. A brazier flares up when you enter the room, but gives no heat. Really just a couple of sentences per room. Two to four per room should be enough for some rooms, and this adventure does that. But it doesn’t really do it very well. The writing is not evocative. The hi light of the adventure is: “A brazier in the center of this room flares up when the PCs pass through the arch. The flames are magical and put off no heat.” It’s the highlight because it uses the word flares. The rest of the writing is short and fact based … which is better than long wall of text but still not in the “good” category.

I want to bitch about about the encounters proper. They pretty simple combats or “put the key n the hole” tile situations. Again, the brazier is the exception. But something rubs me wrong about it. I think it may be written in a “look at this weird thing!” manner. Interactivity, and the ability to exploit the dungeon, is a key feature of a good adventure I’m not sure this does that. I think maybe I’m looking for the writing to be oriented more toward the party. Can you burn shit with that brazier, even though it has no heat? Steal the heatless fire? It just seems written in a manner that makes it more “look at the mural on the wall.” than “and now you can exploit something.” Window dressing has very little place in my D&D. Interactivity is better.

The last encounter has a trapdoor that leads to the main treasure chamber, we’re told. We’re also told that it’s inaccessible because of a cave in. Uncool. Players, in search of treasure, will go to great lengths. Either the treasure chamber should have been listed or the trapdoor/reference not put in or some guidance given. “one month to dig out,” Otherwise this is trivia, and, again, there’s not much room for trivia in my D&D adventures. The writing has to be directed to actual play at hand. Otherwise it gets in the way of the DM running it.

I will note that the hook has the players coming across a bandit in a crow’s cage hanging at a crossroads, who offers the players treasure map for his freedom. Nice job with that. It’s not the usual hook dreck. Treasure maps are fun. Crows cages are fun. Bandit lords are fun. The quandary is fun, as long as the DM doesn’t punish the players for their choices. He’s gonna die anyway, seems like a quick death is better than a slow one …

This is supposed to be something that you pull out when the players go the “wrong/‘ direction and you need a quick adventure. If the writing communicated the environment better (WITHOUT a higher word count) then it might fulfill its stated purpose, even if it were simple. As is, anyone could come up with the adventure. There’s nothing very interesting except the hook. I like the terse writing, but its also gotta deliver the goods. It don’t.

This is $2 at DriveThru. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/236334/ME1009–The-Tomb-of-Dagobert-A-QuickDelve-Adventure?affiliate_id=1892600

By: Various
Death Machine Press
DCC
Level – Various

This is a 28 page zine with a kick ass cover. It has three dungeons in it, as was published in 2014. Good ol’ Bryce, always on the ball. I don’t seek out magazines/zines magazines, but the cover lured me in. I wonder why the adventurer is naked? THis claims DCC, but I think most of the issue has a great OD&D thing going on.

Calcified Caves of the Slime Yeti – Ron Yonts
And another anomaly: a one pager. Again, I don’t usually review these. I like a good one-pages, but the amount of content usually strains my ability to say something interesting about it in a review. This cave system is both wt and dry and features some sloping caverns and holes in the ceiling to get to other area, as well as a river to explore other areas and other terrain effects. That variety is a very good thing, bringing out the exploratory nature of D&D and offering combat options. Note also that it’s not a river. It’s an ICY river. And it’s not a yeti it’s a SLIME yeit, and not caves but CALCIFIED caves. It’s a simple trick but it helps amp up the imagery. This continues with a dried streambed, dry corpses, stirge husks, and dangling buckets. This isn’t stated and the fifteen room adventure has three monsters, in addition to the wanderers, but mixed in are traps and magic pools and the like. I think it’s an excellent example of a one-pager and much much better than most of the adventures I review. I’ll take this as a Lair or Side Trek any day of the week.

The Caves of the Sacred Seven =
This is a thirty room cave complex roughly divided in three sections: cavemen, reptile men, and prehistory … with a map that could easily be easier on the eyes, As you get deeper in freaky things start happening in the corridors (a d30 table) as you experience all the weirdness of the underworld. The rules are all wrong and every perversion is justified when adventurers journey to the mythic underworld, Aisha. The encounters are decent, with some willing to talk and/or trade, and a bit of silliness mixed in. Ooze pits mutate you, and egg incubation chambers await. The text style is very “wal lof paragraph.” The incubation chambers starts with “This chamber appears to be a sort of nesting area for reptilians with many eggs …” Yes … that’s why the room title is “Incubation Chamber.” The text also spends a decent amount of time describing the physical logistics of rooms “the north path runs along the edge of the lake” and so on, as well as delving in to generic descriptions like “This large chamber …” Focused writing with a strong edit would shorten the rooms and make them more scannable at the table and make this an ok adventure.

Tomb of Zarfulgar the Lost
The last entry has a linear map that spells out “ABQ Zine Fest 2014,” so it’s a bit of a funhouse adventure. It’s fifteen rooms, in a tortuous typeface. A gnome with a big treasure sack that grows sharp teeth and tries to eat the adventurers. A room full of friendly clones of the wizard in question, with one doppleganger. Buzz saw blade corridors and creatures made of light that bludgeon you to death with their shoes. It’s a decent funhouse that is a pain to run because of the typeface and wall of text paragraph style. Too bad, it looks fun.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview only shows you the one-pager, with the other five preview pages being table of contents, etc. Bad zone writers!https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/138701/Dungeon-Lord-the-First-Issue?affiliate_id=1892600

By Ian McGarty
Silver Bulettes
Swords & Wizardry
Level 2-3

Can you brave the dangers and outsmart the puzzles to obtain the Orb of Undying Discord?

This eleven page adventure in a small seven room dungeon answers the question put forth above with a resounding “No.” Simple puzzles combine with IMPOSSIBLE combats and drab read aloud.

See that level range? 2-3? Uh huh. How does a 6HD iron golem with AC18 strike you? No? How about a 9HD chimera? Or a 7HD priest with twelve 2HD acolytes? All in the same seven rooms. I don’t want to come across as some kind balance freak, but there’s a limit. There’s no fucking way this was playested. I like unbalanced encounters, but usually you make them a little social, or put allies nearby, or there are some things in the dungeon to take advantage of to give you a leg up. A simple “challenge dungeon” is enemies this tough for a level 2 S&W party is just WAY too much.

And that’s what this is, a simple challenge dungeon. A dyrad has you do some tasks (fighting, of course) for her so she will make the door magically appear. Inside you solve some simple puzzles and face monsters you have to kill in order to move on. This is, by far, not my favorite style of adventure. I find the style seems to tend toward linear and limiting.

The writing is uninspired. A “large room” has a “large stone” in it. Large is a boring word. The goal of this part of the writing is to be inspiring and evocative and ‘large’ don’t cut it. Room descriptions are full of “this 20’ square room” and things like that … facts conveyed by the map that distract from what should be evocative descriptions.

There’s almost no background. I know I bitch about too much background, but there’s too little in this adventure. It’s the third in a series that can be ‘run in any order’, which I suspect is the issue. While you are walking down the road a monk runs out with a scroll case to tell you where the orb of undying is. That’s your background. Why you want it, what it does, etc is not covered at all … I guess it’s in one of the other adventures. This weirdness in the basics of the design continues with one of the room descriptions appearing ABOVE the room number. There’s a basic inattention to some core items.

A half page is devoted to a nearby city. It’s useless. Just generic detail. It has a temple that sometimes sells potions and a mercantile. I have now provided as much detail as the adventure does, with as much evocativeness.

This fails on several basic points, from the descriptions to the challenges to the basics of putting an adventure together.

This is $4 on DriveThru. The preview shows you the town text and some wandering monster tables. “They attack!”https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/227564/The-Orb-of-Undying-Discord?affiliate_id=1892600

By Christopher Seal
Guild Companion/Iron Crown
HARP
“Up to 5th Level”

The lands around Axebridge are renowned for strange happenings. Unbeknown to the inhabitants, these occurrences happen because Axebridge is situated close to a place of great magical power, which was once the site of a great druidic temple. In more recent times, fey creatures have been drawn to the nexus. With the inevitable contact between fey and mortal, old wounds have been reopened. When a jealous admirer is thrown into the mix, the village of Axebridge finds itself under threat, and hope for the village’s future lies in the hands of a few bold souls marked by fate.

Fuck it. Let’s review a HARP adventure.

This 48 page adventure is a simplistic linear “investigation” followed by an old underground druid temple. It has some some fairytale influence and great undead monster imagery. The map is shit, the village lifeless, and it has column long read-alouds and massive amounts of DM text for what should be simple entries … hiding information that the DM needs.

HARP is, I believe, a simplified version of MERP, which is in turn a simplified version of Rolemaster. Normal people were introduced to MERP through the EXCELLENT middle earth regional supplements and to Rolemaster through the greatest critical hit charts ever .. at least prior to DCC. I can’t really review the system specific info, but the adventure here should be easy to review, at least in the context of stealing it for your D&D like game. It starts with you being invited to a wedding.

And as good adventurers you should immediately decline and get as far away from the area as possible. Nothing good ever comes from an invitation. At best you accept it under the social convention that “were playing D&D tonight,” but you know there’s a set up coming. Far better to just burn down any place you are invited in to. The real XP is in the Keep, not on the Borderlands. Also, but only tangentially related, if your DM ever says the word “mists” then you are in Ravenloft and should pull out the holy symbols/water/etc immediately. Anyway, I doubt there any n00bs reading this that need that advice.

More interesting than the invitation there is a Witchhunter hook. The region only recently gaining enlightenment, the local priest as written for help with a local witch and the party are sent to look in to things. While I’m wary of “assignment” hooks, witch hunting IS a fun one … and one of the NPC’s with info is the local wise woman in question. Her and the priest hate each other, and they both have a piece of the puzzle plaguing the village. This is the ONLY interesting dynamic in the adventure and it’s also barely mentioned.

Instead we get a lot of read-aloud in the vein of “Contests of skill and accuracy elicit supportive cheers from those watching …” and “The golden sunrise gilds the buildings of the village …” Just bullshit generalized and flowery text. Paragraphs and paragraphs of it. Columns full of it. You get three sentences before the players stop caring. No one cares about your golden sunrise. The text is generic, ala the “contexts of skill and accuracy …” line, above. The mass of text hides important things. In one part a fey drops a doll which is VERY easy to miss since its in a giants text block. Bolding, terser text, better formatting. All of these are needed.

Instead of focusing the amateur novel writing, the text could have focused on the village NPC’s. The priest and wise woman get a couple of sentences about hating each other, scattered throughout the text, but most of the NPC’s (the four or five mentioned) comes off as flat and dull. Some of the first people you meet are the couple about to be wed and they get no personality at all. Just some generic “hello, how are you” stuff. That’s crap. Given the importance of the village, it needs more NPC’s, written shorter, but with better personalities to hang out DM hat on. Kudos, though, for naming the hothead forester Bryce. 🙂

There’s some decent telegraphing going on. An apprentice priests watches the bride to be with sharp vision. He’s a hangly and homely. He has an unexplained cut on his hand that won’t heal by normal magic and he’s nervous and obviously lying to explain. For some reason, beating the answer out of his isn’t really offered as guidance to the DM, even though it’s the obvious correct investigation avenue to pursue.

This has some great fey stuff in it, but which I mean it seems heavily folklore based. A fey creature sits on the brides chest at night and steals her breathe. A sidhe is silent and aloof and vengeful. A wooden doll is a fetish. This is the kind of folklore and fey based stuff that I really enjoy … those elements related to old myths and legends and turnip princesses. At one point the wise woman send you out to find “elf stones”, river rocks with a hole in them. It turns out they let your nonmagical stuff hit undead only hit by magic items. The old religion redefined, Andrew.

The shitty imagery in the read-aloud stands in contrast to the way the undead are treated, in particular. Buried in their text are one or two really great sentences that make them horrific. It reminds me a lot of how Fallen Jarls treated undead. A woman, stabbed through the chest, wearing a white gown stained with blood, is actually a ghost. Some bones and bits of fur pull themselves together to form a dog-like skeleton. It’s not a ghost,or a skeleton dog, but they are more individualistic and thus more terrifying and mysterious. Good job!

But … too much text for what it is. It’s decent enough, at its core, although simplistic. It’s just BURIED In text.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview doesn’t work. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/221624/HARP-A-Wedding-in-Axebridge?affiliate_id=1892600