tenfootpole.org

By Ken Sturgis
Ten Red Crows Place
5e
0-Level

Trouble at the door. Something in town is dangerously wrong, and there is no one to bail you out. The grave quest falls to you and your friends. You are under-equipped, under-prepared, and in all likelihood, you are not coming back. There is a second of hesitation but then you grab your gear and head out the door. Adventurers are made, not born.

This is a 22 page adventure, about fifteen of which are zero-level character creation rules for fifth edition and the last six or so being a small “adventure” for a bunch of zero-levels. The zero-level rules are pretty much a clone of the DCC rules. The adventure is simple and overly non-specific.

I’ll cover the zero-level rules briefly: they are pretty close to the DCC rules, including a profession, starting gear, and multiple characters per player. It does go over the advantages of zero-level play, the idea that you form your character through play instead of “by build.” Truer words are hard to find. There’s a small section as well on raising your zero’s to level one. If you want zero-level & funnel rules, and don’t have DCC, then this does a decent job of providing the basics in a terse format.

The adventure, proper, is just the usual dreck. Bandits are burning the grain storage. And then while on your way to the evil lords manor, you encounter some kobolds. At the manor you can sneak in or knock on the front door. Both probably lead to one or two fights in the manor.

The major issue I have is with the abstraction. The guys burning the grainery are bandits. But they aren’t. They are lords men, and have been cowing the town for awhile. 5e has monsters called “bandits” and it’s not unusual for an adventure to say something like “for the kingsguard, use the stats for bandit.” Fine, no problem, but in this adventure the use of bandit if reinforced over and over in the text to the point where the original intent of the dudes, a kind of “the lord mayors guards” is lost. Further abstraction comes in the form of “one of the carries a small token of the lord’s authority” thereby indicating they operate on his behalf. What’s the point of saying “a small token …”? How about a scroll ordering them to do it that ends with “HAIL TIAMAT!”, or the head of the village headman, or something else? Why abstract it “some token …” instead of just adding color by saying what it is? This is an EXCELLENT example of how man adventures generalize and abstract and thereby, through the lack of specificity, lose the ability to inspire the DM. This happens over and over again. “A black book that discusses evil artifacts.” and “an evil goblet.” Ug! Name them! Tobin’s Spirit Guide! Something else, anything else! “The black goblet of St Bart the Heathen Betrayer.” See, now it’s fun! Be specific! The final rub is probably the fact that the party members could “fall under the influence of the goblet”, which is TOTALLY not specified. Look, I don’t need a page, but a couple of sentences on this would be great. They get a taste for blood, or something. ANYTHING. The entire adventure is like this.
Finally, the adventure has read-aloud and that text is … weird. It seems more formatted to “visiting heroes” then it is the ad-hoc mob of locals that is implied in the text. This happens over and over again in the read-aloud.

It DOES provide for sneaking past a wilderness encounter, and even sneaking in to the lord manor, both of which are good design decisions. It’s still boring and abstracted, but at least its not exactly a railroad.

This just doesn’t work for me. The DCC zero-level stuff has your mob of morons usually going after something larger than life. The cosmic nature of it tends to add an air to the adventure and a great vibe. This, the mundanity of it, just seems … I don’t know. Boring.

This is PWYW at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $5. The preview is a 22-page flip-book, too small to read. Unlucky. 🙁https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/186076/Fifth-Edition-Funnel?affiliate_id=1892600

By Nick Whelan
Self Published
LotFP
“Low levels”

A brief and bloody 9-page module detailing Velkis, whose voice can never be ignored, and the 5 chambers of his subterranean boudoir.

This adventure describes the small and creepy lair of a … well, I don’t know. Let’s say it describes the small “home” of an NPC. Could be an NPC. Could be a bad guy. He’s an interesting fellow with a creepy home. Maybe you could use him as an NPC that turns in to a villain, or a villain that turns in to an NPC? You’ve got options. It’s VERY flavorful but is, perhaps a bit long for what it is: an NPC and a five rooms.

I keep playing the Trogdar lyrics in my head. Velkis the Vile is a man. I mean a undead man. I mean a demon man. I mean an evil wizard man. I mean … well. He’s a mystery … and that’s a good thing. NOT putting ah ard label on something, or describing it fully, or explaining the whys and hows of everything leaves room for mystery and that’s a powerful technique. The DM’s own imagination then run rampant and fills in the details. People call him “the undead man.” RUmors says he’s a demon or an evil wizard. All we know is that he’s tall, gaunt, sunken features and eyes that bulge. The entire description of him, from physical appearance to his speech patterns and topics is great and gives you an IMMEDIATE vibe of how to play him. It’s sticky; once read you won’t need to refer to it again. He’s absent minded and in the “doddering nutso” category of insanity. He also has non standard powers, which LUV in. Spells are for PC’s. NPC’s can do ANYTHING. It’s so much more flavorful! Basically, you are compelled to do what he says, a kind of continual suggestion spell. And every time you kill him he comes back, a little weaker at first, being regrown in one of the chambers in his lair.

His creepy lair. It’s a trap door at the bottom of a shallow grave. The entire entrance is wonderfully described and very evocative. That leads to a short little lair of five rooms. One has a dead tree that has withered apples growing on it. Around the tree are bodies mixed in to the roots. Or a room with bodies, hanging by their feet, blood draining in to a pool in the “office” of Velkis. Or a statue covered with a powder with jewels underneath. That last one is a GREAT example of a classic D&D issue. You know there’s treasure. You know fucking with it to get it will be a BAD idea. Pushing your luck and coming up with off beat solutions are some of the best D&D moments there are. The rooms have a lot of interactivity and are nicely evocative to give a creepy feel.

And yet … let us not forget that unlike other blogs we actually have high standards on tenfootpole. Let’s talk “area 3”, IE: 1/5th of the adventure. Spanning almost an entire page it describes a torture chamber. The issue with this room is the interactivity, or lack there of. It describes a room with branding irons, mini guillotines, the entire mechanism for an automated one, a wooden horse (thankfully no description provided.) This is all in addition to the general room description and the specific portions that deal with the interactive element in the room: a guy locked in an iron maiden. The torture chamber description, and elements thereof, come off as a laundry list of room items present and then further detailed on how at least one was used. These elements add nothing to the room and are trivia, as if you described the contents of a fridge in describing a typical american kitchen. Thanks. We know what’s in a torture chamber. This room really stands out as being out place in the adventure. The rest of the rooms feel very original and interactive and focused on the interactivity and the evocative nature of them.

It’s described as a horror/comedy adventure. I would instead classify it as a classic D&D NPC. Calling it an adventure may be going too far. Sure, it could be used that way, but I think it works much better as an oracle, or guy who makes potions, or some weird resource like that, something that the party will interact with time and again, perhaps until he turns in to a villain. It doesn’t feel like an adventure. It feels like a location in a larger adventure. A place to go to accomplish something. The name here is a bit off putting, implying a comedy adventure where there isn’t one.

This is free at DriveThru. The preview shows the entire adventure.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/148398/The-Bloodsoaked-Boudoir-of-Velkis-the-Vile?affiliate_id=1892600

By …???
Unbalanced Dice Games
Labyrinth Lord
“Low Levels”

The Blimpkith have taken over the Orc’s caves. There’s no denying the Elves aren’t doing so well either. The party, maybe on their first adventure, are walking around looking for the old Labyrinth Lord. Something floats in front of them… was that him? Let’s see what’s in the cave. What are those, Leprechauns? They don’t seem right… too fat. Blimpkith, haven’t ever seen one of those…

Oh Unbalanced Dice, always there for me when I need a pick me up! This opium pipe adventure is a twenty two page exploration of a cave. An orc cave, under assault by elves, has been taken over by other creatures. It’s got that Unbalanced edge of unrivaled creativity. It runs right up the line of parody/joke adventures but never crosses it. It also feels like the adventures are getting longer, with longer rooms and introductions and that is making things harder to understand a pick out of the text during play. Not cool. The lack of organization and formatting to ease the burden, along with the more almost-over-the-line creatures makes this a pass to run … but better than 99.9% of the fantasy novels ever published by WOTC/TSR.

Let’s cover that creativity first. The bad guys are a breed of leprechaun with a big balloon belly and little arms and legs that float around and shoot at you with suction cup arrows. Sometimes they turn themselves in to two-dimensional colored circles and are used as weapons by other blimpkith. They can, of course, turn party members in to the same sort of floater. One room has a pirate-headed doll that you can unscrew and get some dust of disappearance. The orcs have an anti-blimpkith weapon that looks like a blimpkith turned in to a bagpipe with a gas bag on their ass. There’s a giant turkey. More than one, actually. There’s a scene out of a John Carpenter movie with the head of the orc leader, still alive, hanging from a ceiling. And his body in another room with a chicken head on it. And yet, remember, I don’t think think this is a parody/comedy adventure. It’s written straight.

The text, however, is rough. All of that off-kilter fun is hidden behind and buried in too much text. The Bored Chef room is an entire page long. A paragraph for the chef, a long one for the stove, plates and knives. Another one for how the chef acts. One for what happens if the party eats the food. One for what happens if the party attacks. One for what happens when he gets help. These page long rooms are not infrequent. The main room with the Blimpkith chief is over a page long and nigh incoherent with scantily clad “elf ladies” appearing and disappearing. The creatures themselves get over a page and half to describe all of their abilities, buried in conversational paragraphs. It’s VERY difficult to find things. Bolding, underlining, indents, etc could have all been used to make the information stand out more.

In contrast to this, the information delivery in the shorter rooms are laid out VERY well. “7 dead Blimpkith are floating around the area. An 8th is resting on the ground. Upon inspection it reveals the 8th is a Blimpkith Boomer with 10 charges left!” That’s pretty a pretty damn good progression of a description, from general to specific. Or this one: “A couple of unarmed Blimpkith are playing with the headless body of an Orc. They have made a chicken’s head as big as an Orc’s head and are trying to attach it. The body spasms and they laugh and giggle. The chicken head cackles and spits.” Again, near perfect if you are running that room. You know what to do, and in what order. DId I mention the room with the killer moss that has a pair of elf feet sticking out, wicked witch style? The rooms with more text tend to follow this style also, leading the DM along in a manner that invites the DM to expand the scene … there’s no way to pick things out in the longer rooms.

I encourage you look at the cover photo, it describes the adventure well. A word of advice: don’t run out and buy all of the Unbalanced adventures. Parcel them out. Savour the availability. One day they will all be gone. This isn’t a good Unbalanced adventure to start your journey though. The problems with the text are too many too overcome, particularly with it edging very close to the “too silly” line. But man, the ideas in this are unconventional.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview doesn’t show you anything useful.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/226308/Floaters-In-The-Mozz-Caves-A-Labyrinth-Lord-Adventure?affiliate_id=1892600

By Ade Smith
Fainting Goat Games
5e
Level 2

A curse has fallen upon the village of Greenshade and strange things are happening. A decades old secret is about to be revealed, bringing death to the quiet streets.

This is an eight page adventure with a couple of linear encounters. IE: “scene based.” Epitomizing the shovelware problem in RPG adventures, this has no free will and little to recommend it.

While visiting a village you hear a commotion, only to find a dead man who has clearly been attacked by some animal. Three men take off into the forest to chase it. The village is then attacked by some mephits. Following the trail of the woodsmen, you have a couple of more encounters with: ravens, an awakened tree, a boar and an undead druid spirit. Adventure over! Four scenes. That’s it. And encounter is being generous; this is a 1e level of encounters. There’s a body in a tree and the trees are awakened! Or there is a dead body and there’s a swarm of crows! This could be creepy, if they were not presented so matter of factly. More attention to an evocative encounter could have built on these strong themes and delivered something better.

The adventure has one bright point: the ghostly druid keeps coming back until he gets his revenge, which means killing, or an apology from, a village elder who killed the ghost in question. Convincing the elder is a DC check, but … if you fail … he resists going to the ghost druid to apologize, being convinced he’s in the right. The villagers back him. What to do? Drag him off anyway? The villagers resist! Not quite orc babies, but getting close … in reality I suspect most murder hobos would just say “fine, you can all suffer and die. Enjoy the next three days” and move on.

I want to talk about the s”solution” some also. Ghost druid can’t be permanently killed, he keeps coming back night after night until appeased. Which means killing the heirs of the people who wronged him, getting them to apologize, or casting a Hallow spell on the area. There’s an explicit solution. This rubs me a bit wrong. What’s the purpose of the Bless spell? Is it to give you a bonus? What about Blessing things? Does that work to re-holy altars and solve other small issues? This more expansive view of the spell list, and the players actions, is one of the reasons a DM exists. They get to judge if the players actions are enough to lay the spirit to rest. Forcing the DM down a path (Yes, I know the DM can ignore it, it’s the principal) is less than helpful. Advice and guidance are both appropriate, like “tearing down his temple just infuriates him, since desecration is a big theme for him)”, but constraining the DM, and the party through too explicit advice makes it feel like a little Quest icon above the guys head, instead of the more expansive play opportunities that a DM can provide.

These adventures, the ones that feature “a couple of linear encounters”, are a plague upon the market.

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages long and shows you the entire adventure. The second page, numbered “3”, shows you the second scene with “second fallen” and /”third fallen.” Note first how they are just combats and then second how they have some potential for an evocative scene, with swarms of ravens gathering and bodies in creepy trees. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/226257/Goatlands-GL-2-Death-in-Greenshade?affiliate_id=1892600

By Ken Sturgis
Ten Red Crows Press
5e/Any
Level 1

The players are contracted to steal a magic item at a noble’s fancy party, and are forced to abandon their weapons and rely on their wits to survive. Mayhem required and violence (mostly) optional. Success might bring the ire of an elite with a panache for vengeance and money to burn. Beats killing giant rats in the safety of a basement for a few silver pieces, right?

“A larceny based adventure for morally ambiguous level one characters”, sez the byline. Sign me up! This is a 5e adventure, but it’s being marketed as easy to convert. It’s lightly stat’d, with a few DC checks. There’s probably enough treasure/xp, if the party does some looting, for a gold=xp game.

This is a ten page adventure in which the party try to steal a treasure from a guys house during a party. It is NOT a total disaster. It has some good ideas around focusing the adventure information on the task at hand, the heist, but could use more specifics to ground it for the DM. As written it comes off as Just Another Shitty Little Adventure, when in fact I think that’s a mischaracterization.

This is meant to be a social type adventure, not a hack fest. It notes that the best path forward is casing the place, asking around, subtly, etc, and that starting fights will cause the characters to get in trouble quite fast. The players are contacted by “The Spider”, an underworld figure, to steal a rare objects when the local lord holds another of his “I am the richest man in the vale” party. Let’s pay attention to that, The Richest Man in the Vale party. That tells us a lot It tells us a lot about the lord and about The Spider. That’s the kind of specifics that a DM can hang their hat on. Its detail without wordiness. That is EXACTLY what I’m looking for when I talk about evocative and colorful specifics. Not wordiness “I’m the richest man in the vale party.” I had issues with “The Spider”, thinking it was lame, but the picture provided brings the dude to life, with tufts of hair and long fingers. It’s a good example of art bringing the adventure ot life instead of just being filler.

The adventure does a couple of other things right also. There are three main NPC’s described, for the party, and all of their descriptions are (relatively) short and focused on the action at hand. Pompous and plump lord, quick to anger, intelligent and cunning. The guard captain who drinks to fight his ennui. Good solid stuff. Could be a bit terser and punchier, but still good and don’t overstay their welcome.

There’s also a bit of … telegraphing? Or perhaps “facilitation of fun” that occurs. The treasure us on display but guarded. Watching the guard reveals him longingly looking at the drink trays … turns out he’s an alchi. There’s also a despondent noble in the garden who keeps eyeing the hemlock. In both of these case there’s some fun to be had and the adventure helps facilitate that with the party. If the goal of the adventure is to secretly paint the hose black then the adventure needs to focus on painting supplies, paint, and secrecy. ANd that’s what this does: it provides opportunities.

Likewise the mechanics for the infiltration of the party are decent. The first time the characters caught where they should not be they are asked to move on. The second time it’s a small DC check. The third time they are removed. It’s not just pass/fail, but leads to move adventure, quick talking, roleplay, and an escalation of effects. There’s also a small little section on Small Talk, what happens if the party avoids it, and suggestions for how to make, with specific conversation starters for the NPC’s. These are good, and, again, shows the value of specifics in the adventure. The designer is writing for the DM, to make their lives easier. You don’t do that by listing all of the contents of a room but by anticipating the needs ot DM and focusing your efforts in those areas. Pre-heist, there are some rumors to find out in town, as well as consequences; careless characters will find that the local lord knows someone has been asking questions about him … more opportunities for difficulties during the adventure. And speaking of, there’s a nice little section on difficulties for the characters AFTER the adventure, based on the consequences of their actions during the adventure. Nice integration there.

But … there’s clumsiness here which, I think, reveals a lack of familiarity with social adventures. Or, maybe, a life in which the only adventures seen are “three encounters and a boss” kind of shit fests. Judged on that scale this is a masterpiece. But, it’s lacking in areas that would make it more well rounded.

For example, there are no party guests of note. This adventure SCREAMS for a small table of 15 guests each with a few words/a sentence of personality in order to spice up the party portion. And, of course, the subplots that go along with the servants, party guests, and family … none of which is present. As written it seems like one of those mostly generic 5e/PF affairs; the extra content, a half page, would have done wonders to bring the place to life.

I’m not overly fond of the descriptions either. The read-aloud is the usual atrocious stuff (although short) that communicates nothing. There’s a “mean guard.” Mean is a conclusion; better adjectives and adverbs would help cement an evocative environment. The outside, waiting to get in, is a good example of this. There’s a line to check in, but the entire thing is written as boring as possible. It comes off as a sparsely populated party. Think, instead of the introduction we get to Gatsby in that latest movie … that’s a “I’m the richest man in the vale” party! Or think of the bustle and hustle and excitement in the air in ANY of those Jane Austen movie balls. None of that comes across or is intimated in any meaningful way. .

The entire thing is written in room/key format. That’s TERRIBLE for an adventure like this. The small talk rules are mixed in to one of the room keys. The “caught where you should not be” rules are mixed in to the outside guard post. Those things deserve their own separate sections, with a minimal key for the actual rooms. The map, while noting guards on it, doesn’t have a key (what’s the “m” on the map mean?) And the map is SCREAMING for more information, like showing patrol patterns, or some such. And, drawn as a normal 2d/flat map you don’t get a sense of the roofs, windows, and the like which is critical for an adventure involving a heist.

Those issues are, however, somewhat mitigated by the short length. It IS easy to find things because there’s not a lot of excessive bullshit to clog things up.

This is a serviceable adventure and it much easier to run, with more potential, than the vast majority of the dreck I review. I think the designer has some potential. This adventure, proper? Well … the core is solid but there’s not enough going on at the “party” to get me interested.

This is Pay What you Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $3. The eleven 5-star reviews seem excessive, but, it is DriveThru. 🙂 The preview shows you the entire adventure. That great pic “The Spider” is on the third page. You can’t miss it. 🙂https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/145152/A-Little-Bit-of-Thievery?affiliate_id=1892600

By Tomer Abramovici
Maniac Brews
5e
Low Levels

This is a 28 page adventure (plus a dozen battle maps) in a fourteen room cave complex with a rat theme … with about half the 28 pages being appendices for new monsters and magic items. It can be wordy in places, and has a kind of 4e “enter room/face challenge” vibe going on in places. It’s also got a format that helps mitigate the wordiness and steers closer to interactivity than most products. There’s are things to explore and do! A decent effort that makes me interested in seeing another product from the publisher.

The monster descriptions, proper, are not that good. The first couple of sentences need to be what the DM immediately needs, the looks and demeanor, and not their creation history or some such. There’s a good example of this in one entry: Nipples the rat. The description starts with “Albino with a large cranium.” Perfect! When the DM flips to the monster appendix it needs to be easy to find the most important info, which is almost always the description & demeanor. (Well, besides the stat block, obviously.)

But it makes up the gaps with some creativity. Explody rats. Laser-Rats. Rat-Bear-Pig. It gets in to the spirit of real D&D by providing a new mix of monsters to pump up the old. New monsters keep players on their toes. They don’t know what to expect, it’s full of mystery. Further, they are a resource, in some cases, to exploit. In this case the dungeon has a couple of potions of rat control. Wonderful! It turns a great feature of the dungeon, the new rat monsters, explicitly in to a tool for the party to exploit to overcome other challenges! This is the sort of creative play opportunities that I’m looking for. It was a miss, however, to not put “wielding” rules in to the description of the Laser Rats; that’s the first thing I would do if I saw one.

There are a lot of battle maps, about one per room, I think. I don’t think they add much. They, along with the writing style and vocabulary used, tend to give this a 4e type of vibe. That whole “enter room and have a fight” type of thing. A focus on “Difficult Terrain” and other vocab that is clearly a callback to rules. It’s a weird feeling and more than a little misplaced. The first encounters reinforce this, with a rat ambush straight out of a “this is encounter” 4e textbook. But it’s … not right? Or maybe it’s a toned down 4e that is them mixed with a lot of older-style interactivity?

It’s that interactivity that won me over and elevates this adventure. Skeletons holding notes. A satchel hidden in the ceiling. Statues holding out their hands. Telepathy encouraging you to “Mix the blood!” Black Lotus floating the water pools. Not just a hack fest, but things to DO and explore.

The writing gets loose in places. Here’s the first paragraph for one of the rooms, which occurs in front of the read-aloud: “The Rat King works tirelessly on his various experiments here, hell-bent on his delusional plans of world domination. He is constantly coming up with (and often discarding) new alchemical brews or rat mutations to build an unstoppable army. There is no end to his tinkering and half-baked schemes.” That doesn’t add anything to the room. It’s trivia, useless during play. There’s too much text like this and gets in the way of the interesting text about interactivity, in spite of the bolding and paragraph breaks.

I have to draw some comparisons to the other wererat I just reviewed, Under Tenkar’s Tavern. This feels more exploratory than that, although the map is simpler. The text is formatted better to allow the DM to find things easier. It’s not going to win any awards in that category, it’s still not great, but there was clearly an effort made to help the DM locate things.

The adventure also has a half page to a page of suggestions for follow ups. Things that the DM could riff on regarding prisoners released, treasure gained, and so on. I like it when these small adventures do that; it adds an element of depth and continuity to them that others don’t have. Yeah, it’s a DM thing, but I’m all about the designer throwing the DM a bone to work with.

This is PWYW at DriveThrough, with a suggest price of … $0. It’s free! The preview shows you five pages, which allows you to see the first five rooms. It does a good job of showing the color highlighting, bolding, and use of paragraphs to help organize and orient the DM.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/183874/Madness-of-the-Rat-King?affiliate_id=1892600

By John Turcotte
Dragonsfoot
1e
Level 6-8

This fifty page adventure in an evil fortress is part four of the series that include Fallen Jarls, Towen, and Stormcrows. The last third are appendices, so you’ve got about thirty pages describing about eighty rooms/ over five levels in the fortress.

The snows are melting and the northern clans have rallied to turn back Her Dark Majesties forces. The party is sent to her fortress to kill her once and for all.

This tends to the minimally keyed side of the spectrum, with brief bursts of longer room descriptions. You can think of it as a little room description and then a longer “how the monster interacts” added on … with a lot of variety in that generalization. A two sentence room and a one page room are also featured. The descriptive style could be described as baroque or gothic, with word choice and sentence structure giving it a slightly off kilter vibe. It works well to help get you in to the “fortress in Hell” mindset. As with the previous modules in the series, illusions, both for places and for monsters/devils, are used to great effect to provide variety, mystery, and the horror of the unknown. “Bob the barned devil likes to hand out as a nude man with the head of a cuttlefish.” Well, ok. Don’t see that everyday. Likewise every banquet feast is offal and every majestic visage something else. Likewise a skeleton hunched over with a candelabra on its back, the only light illuminating a great hall. Illusion.

The encounters make the place FEEL like hell. (And … that’s what this is, a fortress that teleports between the prime plane and Dis.) Gardens full of beautiful flowers … that you can use to make poison. A great bell that tolls thirteen times at midnight. Rooms that dim your light and magic mirrors that summon a minor death that only the mirror-user can see. The adventure is full of weird little non-book things, illusions and effects, that make the place feel like a weird ass fortress in Hell.

The bell also serves as a nice entry mechanism to the fortress. After an overland journey (just some “normal” wandering tables) you see the ghostly fortress. At midnight a bell rings thirteen times and it fully materializes, until dawn arrives, giving you a window to enter and leave. That’s a great “enter the mythic underworld” transition to the dungeon.

These “evil fortress” adventures are, I think, hard to do, and I don’t think Turcotte has cracked the code. They need to feel cohesive and alive, and I don’t think this one does. It almost feels like little vignettes. He addresses several of the issues with evil fortresses by simply noting that Hell Is Weird, and the devils know that, so the mere fact the party is in the fortress doesn’t mean an full on alert.

But things feel disconnected at times. That great garden has a room with a gardener. “The gardener, a red abishai devil (HP: 16) dwells here. It appears as a tortoise-like humanoid with an impressive moustache. It has no treasure.” What’s the point of this? We know that they don’t immediately attack … but the encounter goes nowhere. What’s the gameable action this enables? Is he proud of the garden? Resentful? It is, essentially, minimally keyed.

The kennelmaster is another good example of this. “The kennelmster lives here. He looks like X.” and then a long paragraph on how he attacks. And yet other things in the adventure fit in so well. A guy at the front desk takes your names. If you read the book then clerics and mages get a certain bonus, since they now know so much about demons/devils from it. It fits perfectly.

I’m grasping for how to summarize this. There’s a minimally-described overland journey, and the same through a ruined city, with only the main fortress keyed. The fortress has great window dressing and great things to mess with. In spite of that I think it is still on the minimally keyed side of things. There’s just not that little extra to shove the DM’s brain over the edge in to ACTION.

“A pair of dead trees stand sentry on either side of the short passage leading to these doors, their withered branches intertwining to form a high-roofed tunnel of sorts. Weird garlands of iron wire, hooks, teeth and pins hang on the trees, numerous small bones dangling from the hooks and barbs. Beyond, the heavy doors are constructed of bronze and depict endish faces leering from wreaths of bas-relief owers. A flickering red candle is set into a small recess wall beside each portal.”

Great description! Now what? This is one of the best “evil fortress in hell” I’ve seen. The window dressing is excellent, if a bit long in places. But it feels like it lacks potential energy.

This is available, free, at Dragonsfoot.

By Brian Berg & Skip Twitchell
Total Party Kill Games
PathFinder
Level 7

… delve deep into the Sorrowfen, an ancient swamp infested with lizardmen who have suddenly risen to threaten the beleaguered nearby village of Wyverglynn. The village needs aid from a aged witch that lives deep in the swamps and sends the heroes to seek her out. But will the swamp devour them before they can come to the aid of Wyverglynn, or will the fervored tribe of lizardmen within flay them alive?

ONE HUNDRED PAGES. FOR TEN LINEAR ENCOUNTERS. Words cannot describe the feeling in my stomach. THIS is what D&D means to people?

You go to a village in a swamp on some pretext. The villagers are having trouble and send you a witch in the swamp. From there you go to see a lizardman tribe who, of course, are now evil. You fight a big hydra-thing and then get chased back to the village, using chase rules.

So, yeah, obviously it’s overly verbose. Lone read-aloud. Long DM text. Mega long stat blocks. Lots of backstory and history that are irrelevant. The first encounter, an ambush on the road, takes seven pages. For a simple combat with some lizardmen and their pet frogomoth.

Getting to the village, the gates are closed and you need to roll to talk your way in. Roll badly enough and the guards attack you. A town guard attack is not automatically bad, but, in the content, it is. It’s a Roll To Continue. You MUST make your rolls in order to be let in to town and continue the adventure. Without success on a die roll the adventure is over before it begins.

There’s some chase rules The adventure says “After you complete your 24th chase challenge …” Seriously? 24 chase rolls?

It has some good ideas. The town guard not letting you in someplace is good. Making it a blocker isn’t. After all the party is 7th level and has considerable magicks at their disposal to turn this in to a fun exercise in working around the gate guards. There’s the potential for a GIANT maxx combat at the end, with at least a hundred lizardmen. This is the pretext for the chase; getting away from them. But … what if they were 1hd or 2hd lizardmen? Then it could be written as a pitched battle, letting the party stretch their legs instead of a bludgeon used to force a linear chase scene.

The party is sent by the village to go talk to the swamp witch. Turns out she’s a disguised hag. Sometimes she eats people in the swamp, but she also helps lost strangers and helps the village out. This is GREAT. Playing up that aspect would have been wonderful. It’s one of the reasons I like being able to talk to monsters in a dungeon, it presents another angle to play. Instead she’s obviously got a kidnapped girl in the hut and serves you a stew of fingers and toes. Well, duh, guess she’s evil, lets gack her. L.A.M.E. The town rumors are good also, in voice of the locals and fit in well. One of the hooks is also nice: someone in the party likes a beer and it not available anymore, you need to go the village to find out why. That’s a nice one to integrate in to play and is something to motivate a PLAYER. The other two, with a insane halfling and being hired are the usual dreck.

I just can’t get over how wordy this thing is. You can’t find anything in it, long stat blocks and meaningless text clog the thing up in a ridiculous manner.

This stinking pile is $10 on DriveThru. The preview is one of those “flip book” things, showing you the general page layout but nothing of the content. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/143829/The-Fen-of-the-FiveFold-Maw?affiliate_id=1892600

And at fucking $10/pop for crap-ass PDF’s I’m going to have to put up a donate button or Patreon. This fucking shit is getting ridiculous.