tenfootpole.org

By Venger Satanis
Kort’thalis Publishing
Alpha Blue/Generic

This 34 page “adventure” is actually a regional setting with a few event ideas. On a ruined earth the starport in Santa Fe still exists,hence the post-apoc and Alpha Blue/spaceships crossover. It’s got the jr high sex stuff that is becoming synonymous with Vengers style.

I love Gamma World. It’s my favorite child. I have a framed poster of the Warden hanging proudly in my dining room. I wear my Warden command bracelet every day to work. Every Christmas I ask for more post-apoc/generation ship fiction. I STILL think I remember a Tv version of Orphans of the Sky, even though I can find no google hint of it/Universe.

This setting is about 50 years after the disaster. Nukes, radiation, cthulhu monsters, it’s all in here. New Albuquerque is a mutant hanting function city that embraces aliens. Miles to the south, through the wasteland, is the Santa Fe Starport, a working starport. In between are gangs (theming ala The Warriors), warring robot factions, Wizard towers, and a sunken Statue of Liberty. (Because Venger.)

There’s not really an adventure here. The major parts of the region are described each in a paragraph or two. There are a few more words for New Albuquerque and also the starport. There are some events/plots mentioned in the starport, like a sex android revolution, security checkpoints, violent candy, and a “Deal” for smuggling turquoise.

A cult leader, skull face, is referenced several times in the supplement. There’s one throw-away line in the adventure about him launching an assault on the starport.

There’s a gamma world-ish random loot table. I love those things. There’s also a mutant power table in which almost every power involves bodily fluids and sex organs. (I think it’s clear by now that I’m from the midwest, and a bit of the ultra-violence is ok but not boobies.) There’s a strong sex/sleaze theme, which I assume comes from its Alpha Blue heritage.

It’s not an adventure. At best it’s a regional setting with a bunch of ideas that you could use to string a couple of adventure ideas together and add some complications from some other details.

The contention between regional setting and adventure/events/complications makes the organization a bit iffy. Things tend to be scattered around a bit, except for “the region” in the front section and “the starport” in the rear section. When not describing “penis shooting cum facial tattoos” the writing is fairly good. Enough detail (reference facial tattoo above) to bring the specific imagery without the useless garbage that weighs an adventure down in wall of text.

But it’s missing a strong Adventure element, and thus it goes in to my “regional setting with some things to do” category rather than my “adventure in a region” category. Too generalized for my tastes.

This is $6.66 (because Venger … can one roll one’s eyes AND appreciate the devotion to the theme?) at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You can see the loot table (with entry number one being the required stop sign shield) and the last page being the mutation table that focuses on sex organs.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/227000/Gamma-Turquoise-Santa-Fe-Starport?affiliate_id=1892600

By L. Kevin Watson
Fat Goblin Games
1e
Levels 8-10

Talos, a city of legend, focus of tales dating back to the First Age of Man—exotic and forbidden. Buried deep in the Formene, this lone gem of the subterranean realms has legends as tall as the mountains under which it lies. Scholars and sages know more: it is the capital of the Elven race of the subterranean realms, sealed off from the surface world, supported by smaller towns, trading nexuses, and the wealth of knowledge accumulated by the Formene Elves who ward it.

This 37 page adventure collection contains thirteen adventures, eas about two pages long, supplemented by a separate 33 page booklet describing a lost city of elves. It is, at best, an adventure outline and at worst incoherent in many places. Badly bolded, wall of text, generic locations and almost NO context for the adventures.

It’s really hard to describe just how disconnected these adventures are. U guess, in some way, they all relate in some manner to the city of elves. An alternate way to gain entrance, go on missions for them … but then also some REALLY tangential ones. Things like “the party may encounter some of these magic gems and follow up on where to mine them.” Furhter, the actual connection to the city, or maybe the context of the adventures, is almost non-existent.

The first adventure is representatives. Two pages. The first column is a detailed wall of text on meeting an elf and getting assigned the mission. Approached by a halfling. DIrections to a grove. Given a bird call. Details on the journey like “The two-hour walk is uneventful. The characters find the grove with little difficulty.” are rife, along with all the ways the elf will just leave the grove without contacting the party. (I guess that means the rest of the book is useless, since they now cant get entrance to the city the book is arranged around?)

The backgrounds are full of this of micro-level detail, but there’s almost no context. The halfing says an elf wants to meet you. The elf says his wants wants to use the party to arrange contact with the greater world. Why the party gives a shit, the mythic nature of the city, the rewards … all of that is missing. It’s like there’s a paragraph or two missing.

Then the DM text starts in. In contrast to the micr-detail of the background the locations are abstracted to a large degree. Here’s one: “6, 7—Purification Rooms—Up the stairs from the Outer Chapel, these rooms are lit by ever-burning braziers like Area 5 and contain two large, dormant, incense burners near the door on the far end of the room. These rooms might have been used to inhale heady incense before proceeding deeper into the temple.”

Two rooms with one description (the dreaded “reflected layout” for a temple!) and not evocative at all. It’s not that I want a paragraph, but the contract to the detail of the background is stark. Then, the location numbers are bolded and so are the words “For the GM.” Well, it’s all fo rhe GM, since it’s not read-aloud, and bolding of those words, in addition to the location numbers, makes picking out text hard.

The adventures, on two pages each, are all very abstracted. There are cultists around the temple. There are some priests inside the temple. There’s an evil book in room eleven.

There’s just nothing to this. The adventures are generic, with overly detailed introductions and overly-abstracted content.. The context is non-existent and the formatting difficult to follow.It’s almost a Books of Lairs set up, but without even that much coherence.

This is $13 at DriveThru. The third page of the preview starts the first adventure. It’s a great representation of the content you get. Note the left hand column and the detail and then the location descriptions on the right hand side. Weird as all hell.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/214860/DNH3–The-City-of-Talos-Complete-Edition?affiliate_id=1892600

By Jon Gilliam
Self Published
5e
Level 12-15

Here is the Episode 8 that Rise of Tiamat should have contained! Thay in all it’s horrid and far-reaching power and might. A society dark, alien, at odds with itself, and at the boiling point of explosion.

This 130 page adventure (in five parts, with part five being an appendix) offers an alternative to chapter 8 of Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat, but could also stand alone. While the original chapter 8 was just some general throw away content, this is specific, evocative, and, more than ANY product I can recall, revels in flavor of Forgotten Realms. Look, I’m not an expert in FR, but I do know every adventure I’ve seen is generic and lacks flavor. All of the designers seem to think that stupid 50 character-long names are what “flavor” is. That’s not flavor. THIS adventure is flavor. It brings home the evil of Thay, and will no doubt focus the PLAYERS angers, without going off the deep end in to being puerile or vile, at least according to my midwestern tastes. It’s got some issues with being … long? Whatever, while it does a decent job with organizen & reference sheets it’s also going to take some work to prep. It’s ALMOST worth it to me … and since I have high standards … maybe it’s worth it to you.

There’s some pretext to make this fit in to Hoard/Rise. You go to Thay to see what the contact has to say about the Cult. It’s pretty generic in Hoard/Rise. Not so here. There’s one little slave boy in a keep of undead (intelligent & not) who complains of a monster under his bed. Gladiator games are held, with the winners taken to be euthanized and turned in to an undead army. There are zombie infant submission baskets hanging from the ceiling. The “slaves as chattel for necromancers” is just on the edge on being uncomfortable. It’s enough to make the PLAYERS hate Thay, but not so much to generally evoke real-world darkness too hard. At one point you have a dinner with a dragonborn tribe which plays out a little like the Riker dinner with the Klingons. This place FEELS different. It’s not a hand wave. In one of the official adventure, Into the Abyss maybe, the drow guards had “sleeping pallets.” I bitched that it was lame and didn’t conjure an alien culture. Not so here! This place is alive, both with “evil culture”, “evil necromancer culture” and “nonhuman tibres culture.” That’s REALLY good.

There’s a “best way” through the adventure, but it’s not exactly linear. The designer outlines alternatives and flowcharts out the adventure so you can help understand how the locations work together. There’s an explicit section at the end of each to show you what could come next, both from the hints in the location and in things characters might do like “what if they lead a slave rebellion?” and stuff like that. That’s good for these mutliepart things. Both where the adventure naturally leads and how to handle the players choosing other options. I was struck by the hook here also. The inciting event is the kidnapping of a wizard you need to talk to. I was fully expecting a railroad and the wizard to get kidnapped no matter what. I guess that’s ok, I’ve come to accept that the hook is allowed a little more of a railroad. But, NO! In this adventure can you save the victim and there are still ways the adventure can go forward! A delightful surprise!
The NPC”s are well done. They get little offset boxes with a few words describing their physical/personality attributes. Short, evocative, and focused on helping the DM run them. That section is followed by a few bullet points that describe their goals. “Get more Druge. Find some kids to kidnap.” and so on. It’s an effective way to communicate an NPC to the DM effectively.

There are a decent number of non-standard magic items also, which I love. A book that can copy pages if left on top of another over night. A pair of balls that will gently “tug” towards the location of the other one. Not just boring old mechanical attributes but DESCRIPTIONS of effects. Perfect.

The maps are also quite interesting, at least a few for the major locations. They show a scene and can be used as a battle map, but then there’s a second, for the DM, with notations all over it. They describe what’s on the map, almost like a one page dungeon. It’s a great example of leveraging the map for communicating additional information to the DM beyond “key number.”

They are also great reference sheets for rumors (divided by the type of person, like slave or wizard) and for some of the more complicated spell-casters. Good choices.

But …. It’s also got some pretty serious issues.

First, it needs a better summary. There is some long text, that I might say is background, but a small section laying out how the entire thing works together would have been VERY helpful. There are a few sections that try to do something like this but they are all either WAY too specific (the backgrounds) or very general (the flowcharts.) There needs to be something in the middle. AT one point there’s a village where people are sometimes VERY clearly compelled to say things (I love that telegraphed stuff) but you could EASILY miss the reason why. That’s the sort of thing for a general summary. The “one page outline” does a decent job but is missing some important things and still doesn’t feel like an “overview.”

More importantly, I find the text … conversational. The What’s Next and NPC sections are GREAT, as are the reference sheets, notations for rumors, etc. But the adventure falls down over the core text. One of the first sections is when the party teleports to Thay and are greeted by their hostess. There are three paragraphs of text, longish even, taking up a column, that describes the scene. How they are greeted, by who, what they do, etc. The paragraph format, or maybe the “long text paragraph” format doesn’t really work here. Scenes run in to other scenes or other text descriptions without much delineation. More whitespace, bolding, bullets, etc would help A LOT. It’s this, far and away, which drags the adventure down from the lofty heights it achieves in other areas.

Like I said, it’s VERY flavorful, and probably the best FR thing I’ve seen. I love the NPC’s and it would work as both a standalone and as a replacement for chapter 8. But you’re going to need time to prep it and a highlighter. It’s VERY hard for me to recommend it based on that. Better summaries and a reworking of the DM text/scenes would make this magnificent.

This is $5 at dmsguild.
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/234490/A-Mission-to-Thay–Nethwatch-Keep

By Peeka Rihko
Floodhold Publishing
OSR
Levels 1-3

A mansion in disrepair.
A family in shambles.
A thousand dark shapes against aurora-laden skies.

This forty page adventure location describes a family, their small manor, and the region around it, along with ‘a situation’ to drive the action. This fits the old definition of module, as the description of a little self-contained place. In to the locale the players come, to do what they will. It’s got a good core idea, but could use a rethink in order to focus itself on those core ideas rather than trivia.

It’s just a place, described. A small manor, the grounds, the woods and a nearby lake and island, along with the NPC’s. In to this description we add a little history in the form of the Sins of the Past. The owl king, a fae, lives on the island and makes a pact with each member of the family. In exchange for their souls. Which one of them doesn’t want to give now that it has come due. I love the classics and it’s gonna be hard to argue that Faust isn’t a classic. In to this situation we add the party, either working for the owl king (in exchange for … temptation. A level? 6 attribute points? Come on, just a taste …) or perhaps working for themselves, trying to steal a fabulous jewel the manor lord has. Thus the adventure revolves around the PC’s goals and the NPC’s goals with the location serving as the backdrop. That can be good.

Can be. First, the adventure does a pretty decent job in recognizing the NPC’s drive the action and in providing the DM the tools they need to help run the adventure. Little pretext scenes to get the party interacting. A little system for earning (or losing) the lords trust. A nice little section describing what the dead people and animals know, this being D&D after all. And a final touch in describing what they get if the party loot the entire manor, down the roof tiles. Nice touch that. 🙂

The adventure recognizes that the locations are secondary to the NPC’s, but then still spends a decent amount of time on each of them. I didn’t find the descriptions very evocative (maybe there’s a translation issue? This might be Finnish) and the room/location descriptions ran a little long. Not with the usual “exhaustive description of everything” that many adventure s engage in, but rather a general description that’s bland. “Clean but somewhat dusty” and things like that. Not really telling us much at all.

I also found the NPC descriptions a little weak, from the lord to the fae to the animals. Again, a little long, I would have preferred to see a strong personality or trait in the first sentence, to give the DM a feel for the NPC right off the bat. A strong element to hang your hat on and work with. Instead they long and meander a bit.

The same with the DM text descriptions. At one point, buried in a paragraph, it notes strange symbols on the doors and windows. That’s the sort of thing to call attention to with bolding, etc. Make these details stand out, wither with bolding, etc or by putting them first.

I was also thrown, a bit, by the challenges. There’s a 13HD bird monster flying around. And crossing the lake subjects you to 1d10 cold damage (or maybe 1d4 if you protect yourself.) That seems a little excessive for a level 1-3 investigate adventure.

Not a terrible effort, but more focus on the NPC’s and less on the locations. Pruning back the word count a lot, would have helped this one a lot.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $5. The preview is ten pages. The last two pages are the only ones worth anything, showing you some of the pretext scenes and the animal/dead NPC’shttps://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/234290/The-Beseeching-Parliament?affiliate_id=1892600

By Jay Kemberling & Joel Logan
A Hole in the Ground Terrain & Games
5e
Leven 1

They have all been convicted of various crimes. Let your players come up with what they were rightly or wrongly convicted of. They are told they must keep a lighthouse lit for the next five years upon the island as their punishment. A supply ship will come every six months to bring them provisions for the lighthouse. They are told to stay within the walls guarding the lighthouse and not to venture onto the island for great evil awaits them there.

This seventeen page adventure has the characters stuck on an island. Two individuals offer them an escape, if they kill the other person. It’s quite long for what it is, offering really just two encounter areas. It’s a good idea, easy to read and run, but needs to be fleshed out more.; it seems too small/lite.

I reviewed a different adventure in this series and wasn’t very impressed. The folks there suggested I look at this one, one of their favorites. I can see why. It’s quite different in tone and organization from that earlier offerings. The background is short, only about two paragraphs, and describes lovers cursed, and that one must die to break the curse. Nice classic set up. As the intro implies, the party starts on the island. Being PC’s they will no doubt explore where told not to, and this encounter one or both of the NPC’s and be offered an opportunity to escape if only they would kill the other, freeing the NPC from the curse. A melancholy affair, I salute the adventure for getting in and out fast with background and the classic trope.

The unique magic items are ok, with unique effects but somewhat generic descriptions. A line of “WoW” would go a long way there. It adventure also does a decent job of making Question & Answer time easier for the DM. For each of the three main NPC’s (two accursed lovers and a lighthouse keeper) we get a small section description questions the party might ask and their response. It’s easy to pick things out, even though it is in “read aloud” format. The read-aloud doesn’t really add anything, and therefore it could have been in “DM text” format, saving considerably on space.

It also provides some guidance with common PC activities. Want to build a weapon? Or hunt? The adventure provides some short guidelines, as well as one or two obvious gimme’s for PC’s, like “A dwarf will recognize the stonework as elven.” THis is good adventure design: anticipating the most frequent issues the DM will have to face and addressing it.

It’s short, with only two real encounters: each of the former lovers. You may visit each multiple times, but it’s just those two. Other than the length and weakness of writing (which I’ll get to shortly) this is the primary issue with the adventure. It’s more of a side trek, in Dungeon Magazine terms. In fact, I’d say it could EASILY be a one-page dungeon and loose very little.

There ARE some long read-alouds. Again, you get three sentences, at most. More than that and people stop paying attention. Don’t believe me? Go find the WOTC article on the subject. It’s linked in my “Review Standards” page.

I would note also that he writing addresses the characters directly, which is never a good idea. This is done, generally, to build tension and communicate flavor and I think it’s a TERRIBLE way to accomplish that. “In your weakened condition …” or “You make your way to the center of the bottom level …” Nope. Do not. I hug the wall, like I always do, awaiting DM treachery. These attempts at first person writing don’t get the party in the mood, they do the opposite in yanking them out of it.

The read-aloud is also abstracted. “The lighthouse looks old.” That’s a conclusion, it’s abstracted from something. Better to write and describe the lighthouse in such a way that the listener/reader comes the conclusion it’s old. AGain, I’m not looking a novel here, just a short replacement sentence that communicates the vibe that the lighthouse is old, for example.

There’s a moral issue in this adventure, and those are always hard in D&D. It’s supposed to be a fun game; there are indie games available for exploring your childhood traumas. Two accursed lovers. Both want you to kill the other. Both offer you an escape from the island if you help them. No one really evil. That makes the choice hard. A little more in the “Chris was obviously evil, at least at one time” category, or a clear third option (there is one of those, but it’s not exactly clear to the party, I think) could help the designer out of that bind.

I wouldn’t say this is a good adventure, it’s a tad short and the writing a bit long. But it’s not exactly a bad adventure either. Given my recent 5e reviews that alone is a compliment. A one-page version of this would be a nice thing to experiment with. The vibe reminds me a bit of the Metagorgos adventure I reviewed … in the last year? I don’t feel ripped off, and while I think the themes interesting, there’s not enough to capture go forward with running it, I think. But … I’m also interested enough in the publisher to check out some of their other offerings.

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is only two pages, with the second page showing you that short little background at the end of it. A third page, showing an encounter, would have been helpful from a “make a purchasing decision” standpoint.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/225869/Off-the-Beaten-Path-Vol-I-The-Isle-of-Klamacki?affiliate_id=1892600

By Stephen J. Grodzicki
Low Fantasy Gaming
OGL/d20
Level 2?

Lady Hargraves, a prestigious noblewoman and infamous socialite, has a desperate mission for the party: her husband Lord Hargraves is on a drinking binge once again, and she wants him returned home, in one piece, ASAP.

This eleven page adventure has the party searching about town for a nobleman on a bender. A random street encounter table, a selection of a dozen bars, and a finale bar provide the setting. Labeled a “Framework”, I would instead say it embodies the spirit of old school design, in both it’s focus on the adventure at hand and, well, Framework design. And while I can admire the concept I can also say that I don’t think it succeeds. The bars are connected as well as they could be, the outcome seems a bit random, and the street encounters seem more like window dressing. And, for the record, I LUV city adventures.

Rereading the hook, which I supplied as the publishers adventure description up there in the first paragraph, perfectly orients you to the adventure. It’s terse and relatable and I, the DM, know what to expect.

What follows is about a page of additional background to expand on it, something akin to the “first encounter” with her ladyship. Laid out over multiple paragraphs it could have done with some bolding of certain lines to make them stand out. Things like “Hargrave’s carousings tend to involve punching out other lords, setting stables on fire, emptying his gold purse in some of the less reputable “dancing” houses …”, or perhaps the finders fee/reward and so on. It’s also a bit sparse on a personality for her ladyship, and give that most of a page is devoted to this section it seems like that should be included.

The street encounters take up a little over one page next. I like the idea but not the execution. The encounters here tend to window dressing. “Etched into the floor of this tiled courtyard is an awe inspiring landscape (preserved elven relic): a clifftop overlooking the sea, with a pterodactyl rider fending off a pair of giant dragonflies.” And? This reminds me of the Isle of the Unknown encounters, where stuff just shows up, without any potential energy. Almost all of the street encounters lack this sort of energy, and I don’t believe any of them is actually related to the adventure at hand. Hmmm, maybe one, a curfew suddenly being declared. Otherwise they seem too tangential to provide the DM anything to work with to springboard off of. They need just a little more and/or a rewording.

At some point in the night you have an encounter with the secret police/palace guards. I don’t see it leading to anything other than combat 80% of the time. And yet there are no consequences for killing them. That seems unusual. It’s also a bit strange that their background and history are included in the main text, clogging it up, instead of in an appendix. I like my text focused on the adventure at hand with background data in an appendix where I can easily ignore it while running at the table.

The pub crawl to find Hargrave is, essentially, random. Roll a d12. If you get a 12 you’re at the bar where he is. If you get a 10 you’re at a bar that has a real clue to his location. Everything else is either some small little action and/or rpg element or a dead end clue. I’m not morally opposed to this style (yet, anyway.) But I am highly suspicious. In D&D the destination is meaningless and it’s the journey that counts. This FEELS like the party has little control over their own fate in finding him. Perhaps I’m too gun shy because of all of the linear adventures I’ve reviewed. It SEEMs like the bar crawl should be an ok idea, but it looks an awful lot like this other stuff I’ve seen that really sucks …

In conjunction with this is a kind of timer. Your reward is based on her ladyship not being too embarrassed by her husbands drunken antics. For every hour the party takes the DM rolls on the drunken antics table. But, recall, finding him is almost entirely out of the players hands, random. I might instead marry the concept to something like Short Rests, or whatever is analogous in the system this is being run in. If you “waste time” then an antic happens, where waste time is rest, conduct a ritual, go seek healing, etc. That would put the outcomes a little more in the players hands. Now their decisions to get in to fights/avoid them (wasting HP resources that need healing, etc) impact the outcome.

I like the concept/style/design principals of these adventure frameworks, even if this one was not stellar, and may check out a few more. Although … I could swear I’ve seen one of these before somewhere.

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is only two pages long, with only one page of real content, the background page.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/232395/Adventure-Framework-25-Revelry-in-Northgate?affiliate_id=1892600

by Joseph A. Mohr
Expeditious Retreat Press
OSRIC
Levels 6-10

For many years now the locals around the village of Dunmoth have spoken only in whispers about the strange goings on in the Wild Woods around the village. Tales of a dark tower that appears in the night and then disappears again by day have been passed along for generations in the village. Strange creatures have been seen around this tower the like of which have never been seen or even heard of before. Creatures that appear almost to be some kind of monstrous combination of some of the most hideous and horrifying creatures known are claimed to have been seen near this tower. Rumors of the tower’s return have circulated, and a hearty band of adventures has left to explore the dread place. The question remains if they can return, however…

This sixteen page adventure describes a wizards tower with about fifty rooms; four tower levels and three dungeons. The tower levels are just one big open room each but the dungeon levels are small fifteen room-ish affairs. This leans towards funhouse a little, with certain rooms having encounters that make little sense in context, but that probably doesn’t matter; it’s D&D after all. Decent new magic items do not make up for the long paragraph writing style employed. It’s got a bit of the set-piece thing going on (again, the funhouse aspect), but getting past that I’d say the effort lacks a strong edit to impose good style.

The tower appears during the full moon and disappears when the first hint of moon appears in the sky. Inside are … challenges. In one tower level room you have to answer a riddle of a demon appears to attack. Another room is pretty explicit: a skull says something like “who accepts my challenge?” Doing so teleports you to a single combat chamber and you fight a monster. Long ago a player in a game made an adventure I played in. You spun the wheel from the game life and either got a treasure or fought a monster. That was the entirety of the adventure. While I appreciate them making an effort, the Judge in me raises an eyebrow, especially in a commercial product like this one. Surely there are better ways?

Likewise there’s another room where you answer a riddle and in return all of the suits of armor in the big tower room burn to ashes and a magic ring appears. Sooo …. As the owner of the tower I must say that I have chosen a rather strange jewelry box, what with the riddle and the burning down and the devotion of an entire level of my tower to such a lock. Again this points to the funhouse like aspect to the design. Rooms appear not because they make sense, or because they were crafted to work together, but rather because the designer had an idea they wanted to use and just put it in. I think maybe just a LITTLE more pretext is called for … or else go the other direction entirely and make it the Mad Jesters dungeon.

The room descriptions are LONG, three paragraph affairs with little formatting to them or attempts to call out special data via bolding, etc. This forces you to keep your head down, reading the entry and continually look at it. That’s not a DM style I can be supportive of. I want to have my head up, looking at the players, interacting with them, taking quick glances down. This is the “scanning method” that I mention so frequently. Reading the room is for the first time read through 45 minutes before players show up, not for running it at the table. These long writing styles with little formatting do not lend themselves to the scanning style. I don’t know, maybe I’m alone. I don’t see how it’s possible to be an effective DM while continually looking down and reading instead of interacting with the players.

At times we get long descriptions of normal things, like what an alchemist’s lab looks like. These sorts of laundry lists (or maybe Doomsday Book) of room contents are lame and do nothing to support an adventure. If you don’t know what’s in a bedroom or kitchen by now then it’s not the designers job to fix you.

Some of the magic items are just book things, but others are more interesting. A ring of Murder os made of congealed and hardened blood. Cool! Exactly the sort of specificity I am looking for, and it took almost no extra space to describe.

This stands in contrast to the new monsters. I generally like new monsters, they keep the party guessing. It’s also important to write the entries effectivly. The first line of the “Broken Ones” is that “these creatures are the sad objects of Arcmas experimentation.” Should that REALLY be the first sentence? Is that what the DM needs when they flip to this entry after a wanderer is called for? Description first, call out notable features, etc. The bullshit flavor text backstory can be shoved in later on. Further, I don’t thin the entries support the DM well. The Broken Ones are supposed to be human animal hybrids, all different, but that’s all we’re told. No table to help us out, or example given. That’s a MAJOR miss to helping the DM create an evocative atmosphere.

This is $14 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages long and shows you a lot of the adventure style. Levels two and three of the tower appear on page three of the preview and show you the funhouse riddle rooms. Virtually any room in the last half of the preview, the dungeon rooms, will illustrate the longish writing style.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/232291/Advanced-Adventures-39-The-Dark-Tower-of-Arcma?affiliate_id=1892600

By Richard Kunz
Legendary Games
5e
Level 1
The people of Corbin Village are hardy folk, familiar with the dangers of the region. But when a band of orcs raids the village, Sheriff McBride realizes she has more troubles than she can handle and calls on a group of heroes to bring the orcs to justice. To complicate matters, the orcs have stolen an item of great historical value from the local sage, and he wants it back. Can the PCs survive the dangers of a nearby marsh and locate the bandits’ hidden lair? If they do, can they take down the orc raiders and recover the sage’s precious statue?
This fifty page completely linear adventure is aimed at n00bs and to be “quick and easy to prepare.” Linear, long read-aloud, too much DM information preventing scanning … all the usual bad choices are employed.
Before I start stabbing this NPC n the throat I’d like to mention a couple of nice things this adventure does. First, there’s a great picture of lizardmen in it. They look more like Gecko-folk, with red skinned heads and a kind of bipedal salamander body. I don’t often mention art, but I think this piece really adds to painting an evocative picture of the creatures. A little non-standard and a different take on them.
Secondly, there’s a bit in the swamp while you are tracking the orcs to their lair. The tracks reveal a mechant being forced along with them. This is a great way to foreshadow and ramp up the tension in an adventure. The party is now aware of a prisoner and will be on the lookout for them. Or, it would be if that were the case. I misread this section the first time around. Turns out there isn’t a captured merchant and they are not a part of the adventure. I can has Sadz.
I continue to be perplexed by these things. Fifty pages, the thing doesn’t really start till page sixteen or so, and the last dozen or so pages are just appendix padding. Is this the evil of Pay Per Word, or just bad lessons learned from WOTZ & Paizo? Whatever the reason, I find the bulk of adventures worthless. I want to say “modern adventures”, meaning Pathfinder & 5e, but in reality the problem plagues most systems … its just REALLY hard to find 5e/Pathfinder stuff that isn’t infected with it.
This could be a textbook example of bad read-aloud. It’s not full of insane 3-page long sections, but more representative of the usual read-aloud dreck. They tend to be long: five paragraphs, a page. That’s bad design choices. Players don’t care. Recall the WOTC article: you get AT MOST three sentences before people stop paying attention.
But wait … there’s more! The read-aloud is used to signal the start of an encounter. “You’re walking through a swamp. A frog jumps in to the water.” High alert! Everyone on their toes! By enforcing a system of encounters starting with read aloud you telegraph encounters starting.
Then there’s the ever present football player r… oops, no, I mean ‘italics.’ Italics is a popular choice for read-aloud, as well a fancy italics font. It is a BANE upon the products. The goal is to make life on the DM easier and a hard to read font, that you then italicize, is not easy to read. It’s hard to read. Put the shit in a shaded box or bold it or something, but the emphasis has to be on making it EASY, not more difficult.
Frequent readers will recall that I demand an adventure be easy to run with little prep. AT first glance, the designers “this is quick & easy to prepare” statement would seem to align. Except their definition is different than mine. I have no idea what their definition is, but it’s not quick & easy. The DM text is LONG. Very long. Encounters can be two to three pages long. This does not lend itself well to scanning at the table. It has a very loose, rather than focused, communication style with lots of padding and non-essential detail. A guy stuck in quicksand has been there awhile, we’re told, and his legs are numb and he can’t get out himself. Well no shit. It’s this sort of thing that adds to the text. It does not add gameable detail. It’s justifying the situation, which the adventure should NEVER do. Or, almost never. Whatever. It’s almost never called for.
But, specificity IS needed. At one point early in the adventure a sage relates that a statue was stolen by raiding orcs. It was created by “people of an ancient civilization.” That’s generic and boring. “It was created by the vile Arc-teryx people, long ago dommed by the sun god” is the sort of specificity that adds color to the adventure. Otherwise it’s clear it just a throw away line, the players will recognize that, and not be as invested.
I want to call out an additional thing that is sticking with me. In the initial encounter, when the orcs attack the village, the read aloud emphasizes a cart stuck in between the village gates, keeping them from closing. But, that’s not the first encounter. Instead the party is forced to some orcs battering away at the weaponsmiths door. Everything about the setup says “Close the gates! Free the wagon!” … but then the adventure forces you a different way. Bad design.
This is supposed to be an adventure for noob players and DM’s, especially younger players. It justifies choices, like its linearity and the linear orc cave at the end, by noting its simpler. Yes. It also forces a scene based system and removes player agency, which is one of the most important aspects of RPG’s. Ask yourself, do you want choices or is the DM telling a story? We’re not playing FIasco or Shab-al-Hiri. The switch to scene-based linear adventures, and DM storytelling, removes an important feature. And you know how I feel when I think I’m being tricked and my expectations are not met.
In the end, this is just another garbage scene-based adventure, impossible to run easily at the table because of the flood of text.
This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages, which shows you the credit and table of contents and publishers philosophy. IE: nothing of use to help to make a purchasing decision.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/183049/Trail-of-the-Apprentice-The-Bandits-Cave-5E?affiliate_id=1892600?affiliate_id=1892600

By Richard Kunz
Legendary Games
5e
Level 1

The people of Corbin Village are hardy folk, familiar with the dangers of the region. But when a band of orcs raids the village, Sheriff McBride realizes she has more troubles than she can handle and calls on a group of heroes to bring the orcs to justice. To complicate matters, the orcs have stolen an item of great historical value from the local sage, and he wants it back. Can the PCs survive the dangers of a nearby marsh and locate the bandits’ hidden lair? If they do, can they take down the orc raiders and recover the sage’s precious statue?

This fifty page completely linear adventure is aimed at n00bs and to be “quick and easy to prepare.” Linear, long read-aloud, too much DM information preventing scanning … all the usual bad choices are employed.

Before I start stabbing this NPC n the throat I’d like to mention a couple of nice things this adventure does. First, there’s a great picture of lizardmen in it. They look more like Gecko-folk, with red skinned heads and a kind of bipedal salamander body. I don’t often mention art, but I think this piece really adds to painting an evocative picture of the creatures. A little non-standard and a different take on them.

Secondly, there’s a bit in the swamp while you are tracking the orcs to their lair. The tracks reveal a mechant being forced along with them. This is a great way to foreshadow and ramp up the tension in an adventure. The party is now aware of a prisoner and will be on the lookout for them. Or, it would be if that were the case. I misread this section the first time around. Turns out there isn’t a captured merchant and they are not a part of the adventure. I can has Sadz.

I continue to be perplexed by these things. Fifty pages, the thing doesn’t really start till page sixteen or so, and the last dozen or so pages are just appendix padding. Is this the evil of Pay Per Word, or just bad lessons learned from WOTZ & Paizo? Whatever the reason, I find the bulk of adventures worthless. I want to say “modern adventures”, meaning Pathfinder & 5e, but in reality the problem plagues most systems … its just REALLY hard to find 5e/Pathfinder stuff that isn’t infected with it.

This could be a textbook example of bad read-aloud. It’s not full of insane 3-page long sections, but more representative of the usual read-aloud dreck. They tend to be long: five paragraphs, a page. That’s bad design choices. Players don’t care. Recall the WOTC article: you get AT MOST three sentences before people stop paying attention.

But wait … there’s more! The read-aloud is used to signal the start of an encounter. “You’re walking through a swamp. A frog jumps in to the water.” High alert! Everyone on their toes! By enforcing a system of encounters starting with read aloud you telegraph encounters starting.

Then there’s the ever present football player r… oops, no, I mean ‘italics.’ Italics is a popular choice for read-aloud, as well a fancy italics font. It is a BANE upon the products. The goal is to make life on the DM easier and a hard to read font, that you then italicize, is not easy to read. It’s hard to read. Put the shit in a shaded box or bold it or something, but the emphasis has to be on making it EASY, not more difficult.

Frequent readers will recall that I demand an adventure be easy to run with little prep. AT first glance, the designers “this is quick & easy to prepare” statement would seem to align. Except their definition is different than mine. I have no idea what their definition is, but it’s not quick & easy. The DM text is LONG. Very long. Encounters can be two to three pages long. This does not lend itself well to scanning at the table. It has a very loose, rather than focused, communication style with lots of padding and non-essential detail. A guy stuck in quicksand has been there awhile, we’re told, and his legs are numb and he can’t get out himself. Well no shit. It’s this sort of thing that adds to the text. It does not add gameable detail. It’s justifying the situation, which the adventure should NEVER do. Or, almost never. Whatever. It’s almost never called for.

But, specificity IS needed. At one point early in the adventure a sage relates that a statue was stolen by raiding orcs. It was created by “people of an ancient civilization.” That’s generic and boring. “It was created by the vile Arc-teryx people, long ago dommed by the sun god” is the sort of specificity that adds color to the adventure. Otherwise it’s clear it just a throw away line, the players will recognize that, and not be as invested.

I want to call out an additional thing that is sticking with me. In the initial encounter, when the orcs attack the village, the read aloud emphasizes a cart stuck in between the village gates, keeping them from closing. But, that’s not the first encounter. Instead the party is forced to some orcs battering away at the weaponsmiths door. Everything about the setup says “Close the gates! Free the wagon!” … but then the adventure forces you a different way. Bad design.

This is supposed to be an adventure for noob players and DM’s, especially younger players. It justifies choices, like its linearity and the linear orc cave at the end, by noting its simpler. Yes. It also forces a scene based system and removes player agency, which is one of the most important aspects of RPG’s. Ask yourself, do you want choices or is the DM telling a story? We’re not playing FIasco or Shab-al-Hiri. The switch to scene-based linear adventures, and DM storytelling, removes an important feature. And you know how I feel when I think I’m being tricked and my expectations are not met.

In the end, this is just another garbage scene-based adventure, impossible to run easily at the table because of the flood of text.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages, which shows you the credit and table of contents and publishers philosophy. IE: nothing of use to help to make a purchasing decision.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/183049/Trail-of-the-Apprentice-The-Bandits-Cave-5E?affiliate_id=1892600