Dungeon Magazine #143

Posted on July 15, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


Riding the Rail
By Christopher Wissel
Level 5

When I saw this I thought to myself ‘this better not be a fucking magical Eberron railroad adventure …”. It’s a fucking Eberron magic railroad adventure. Joy. Magic tech. Bound air elements. A need to explain everything. There are NPC’s on the train, but they get no personalities, names, or anything else. A new fucking low in adventure design, you move from room to room on the train and in each you fight someone. No roleplaying. “A big climax fight on the roof of the train! Ohhhhhh!” *yawn* The tactics porn is the only thing that matters. Fuck the roleplay. Fuck creativity. Go memorize the rules and build your min/max piece of shit character with your impotent DPS ratings. Fuck you and your “different people like different things” shit. Go fucking play Dust Tactics.

Tides of Dread
By Stephen Greer & Gary Holian
Level 9

Part five of the Savage Tide adventure path. You wrecked on the Isle of Dread and made your way through the jungle to the colony of Farshore. You start out saving the colony and then wandering over the island accomplishing missions to beef up the colonies defense in prep for a pirate attack in two months. Then you defend against the attack, with everything done sofar earning you VP’s. Get enough and you win. In short the entire thing is: Do missions to Get points. There six when you first fight off the pirate raid, then five more on the island and then seven more during the big pirate invasion. The initial pirate raid and the final pirate battle both present some classic scenes: buildings on fire, pirates attacking villagers, and so on. The initial raid scenes are the best, with the final battle scenes being more in the “general crib notes expanded at length” variety. The middle section, across the island on missions, feels … disconnected? “Go see if the natives will help us” turns in to fighting fire bats, journeying across the island, and other “fetch” quests. ALL of the sections could be organized better, with better summaries and introductions and significantly cut text that instead focuses evocative atmosphere. I find myself to drawn to these “chaos decision” adventures. This one, chapter one of Hoard of the Dragon Queen (which I rewrote) and the start of DCO. I’m also not sure how I feel about them. I like the chaos and pressure to make decisions. What is seldom/never handled well is splitting the party. When you give them choices they will split to maximize outcomes and no adventure I’ve seen handles that well, either in execution or in preventing it. I like the concept presented in both the chaos/decision pressure and the “build defenses” section (and I think I’ve said down in the Troll Lord I series and a couple of Zombie Invasion type adventures) but it’s just not presented well here. Too bad, a jungle isle would be a good place for that. Time to go watch Zulu again …

Mask of Diamond Tears
By Nicolas Logue
Level 13

Why me? What have I done? When these thoughts arise, as they do with this adventure, I recall a line from Unforgiven: deserve’s got nothing to do with it. The first real scene is the party trying to talk to a guy in a restaurant. The maitre d’ won’t let you in. You’re 13th level and that’s not famous enough. You can’t bribe him. Period. You can’t wait outside to talk to the guy, since the guard captain dimension door’d in. It’s interesting that the most obvious solution, slitting his throat and letting him watch himself bleed out, isn’t discussed at all, even though it DOES deal with attacking the guard captain.

I’d like to break for a moment and discuss society and the role of violence within it. Imagine you are a medieval lord and your neighbor brings a suit against you, claiming that your apple orchard is actually his. He wins. His serfs show up to collect his apples and you send your dudes over and kill them all. From a certain point of view ‘right’ is what you can enforce. CLoser to home, if a maitre d’ turns down your $2billion bribe for a table and you stab him 127 times in the ocular window with your pen, ‘justice’ is again at the mercy of what can be enforced. You you post bond and flee? Bribe the courts/police? Donate $1billion to EVERY politician’s campaign for a pardon/law change? Hire a small army of soldiers to break you out of jail and start a blue-uniformed paramilitary organization with cool tanks? COBRA! Is it left as an exercise for reader on why you didn’t seek mental health treatment for your entitlement issues with all that money, but, whatever. I’m reminded of the Fargo TV series and the bad guy saying something like “People live their lives by rules. Want to know a secret? There are no rules.” At 13th level you’re quite a powerful group and I can construct at least a dozen philosophical justifications for various degrees of coercion against the maitre d’. Next time you hear about one of those “Nobles had the right to kill peasants without repercussions.” remember to remind yourself, maybe the dude was a snooty maitre d’.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 7 Comments

The Dungeon of the Selenian Conclave

Posted on July 12, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


By Alessandro Dellamotta
Starlight Games
Basic D&D
Levels 1-2

Deep underground, an orc-infested dungeon is revealed to be an abandoned sorcerous laboratory, the turf of powerful ancient wizards and their secret research… There, the Selenian Conclave labored on how to extend their reach to a place most remote indeed, for their aim was the Moon itself!

This is an eighteen page adventure in a small two level dungeon with nineteen rooms. About half the rooms are quite complex with the second half, mostly level 2, being much simpler. The puzzle rooms are very mechanical and the simplistic formatting used detracts from usability, fighting you, in almost a wall of text manner. There’s stuff to play with, but this is almost certainly highlighter material.

The core of the first level, and hook, are orcs raiders who have moved in, but after a couple of rooms it turns in to a wizards dungeon, with the five (gone) wizards rooms being the bulk of the dungeon, as well as their summoning circle. The puzzles/interaction in the dungeon mostly relates to the doors to the wizards suites and various tricks. A prismatic wall, fibonacci sequence lock, other simple logic puzzles. In their rooms you can find some parts that can be used to get a giant teleport circle in the basement working. Thus the interactivity is more of the traditional puzzle type. This makes many of the rooms over a column or so in length, with a significant portion based on just getting through the door.

The backstory is long, and not really interesting, with the dungeon actually starting on page six. Lines like “the broken statues were actually destroyed stone golems” adds trivia backstory that has no use in the adventure. This, combined with the already lengthy descriptions, creates an almost wall of text environment in the rooms where you hunt for the important stuff. There’s some combination of the font, spacing, formatting decisions, that make it all run together worse than usual. Highlighter is a necessity … and that’s never a good thing. It’s the designers job to make sure I DON’T need to use a highlighter. Bolding, bullets, removal of useless trivia … all needed. The mundane treasure presented borders on either side of the barely acceptable line, with gold necklaces and silver earrings walking one side and an ivory statue of a warrior toeing the other.

The setup is good, with the orc raiders and their response briefly touched upon, with a couple of sentences about the villagers, their pleas, rewards, reactions. It doesn’t drone on, even if it is more than bit disorganized, appearing in multiple places. This dovetails in to some NPC hostages the orcs have, with motivations and a decent/terse personalities to roleplay. Motivations that don’t go on and a lack of emphasis on trivia like appearances. There’s not really enough adventure, after rescue, to fully utilize them, a decent sized design flaw.

I find this one hard to judge. It’s trying to do the right things, it’s just implementing them clumsily. The adventure has three parts: the orc raiders, the further exploration of the wizard suites and dungeon doors, and then figuring out that there is a bigger summoning circle puzzle to solve. That’s a nice structure, as is the theming of the various wizards. The engineer. The prismatic one. The ghost. The spider on. Nicely done. But the entire second level is essentially empty except for a puzzle room, and the orc raider portion is a little small. Combined with the quite rough formatting/almost-wall-of-text, and a little bit of a “samey” vibe of the the thing feeling like every puzzle is a door puzzle …

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview if four pages long and shows you some of the backstory, some of the village stuff. The first two rooms (or, most of the second room anyway) are listed, which is a good example of the style of the rooms in this adventure. You get to see the NPC details (yeah!) as well as the LONG room descriptions and the font/formatting that I think contribute to the wall of text feel.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/212060/Dungeon-of-the-Selenian-Conclave?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments

10’+1 – Tomb of the Serpent Kings

Posted on July 10, 2017 by Bryce Lynch

Another double shot review! The first by Bryce and the second by The Pretty Girl!

Review 1 – Bryce Lynch

By Skerples
Coin and Scrolls Blog
System Neutral
Level 1

This thirteen page adventure is a three level dungeon with 52 rooms. It’s a teaching dungeon, meant to introduce new players to various dungeon elements. Because of this it has a wide variety of things to encounter with lots of things to “play with” in the dungeon, from breaking statues to secret doors, traps, puzzles, and so on, with integrated designers notes. It’s also got a conversational style and, while targeted at new players, it’s almost certainly inappropriate for new DM’s. It needs to decide what it is, burn itself to the ground, and build off the nugget that’s left.

This is a teaching dungeon, meant to introduce new players to the various elements/tropes of dungeon. It’s a nice idea, but I disagree with many of the choices made. Yeah! Something interesting to talk about! The core concept of introducing players to dungeon tropes means that there is a WIDE variety of things to interact with in the dungeon. Status you can break open to find treasures, secret doors/statue interactions, weird lich-like monsters to talk to, weird trap things you can use against enemies, and so on. The variety of encounters in this dungeon is staggering and reminds me of Thacia and Blue Medusa in terms of density of things to do.

And this is my first issue, which is going to be super pedantic. It’s not an OSR teaching dungeon. It’s a SKERPLES-designed teaching dungeon, teaching you how to play Skerples dungeons. (Which, btw, seem to have LOTS of statues in them. 🙂 Further, it’s mostly teaching the standard Tolkien-D&D dungeon tropes. Is there a role for this? I guess so? I think I take exception to the Standard Tropes. I like the classics, but, I dislike the … genericism? that sometimes creeps in to them. Another path would have to include some classic pop-culture/folklore elements. Things behind waterfalls. A moving bookcase. Chandeliers that fall. A chimney with golden arms up it. I freely admit this is a preference thing, but I also think that my classics list would give n00bs a better first experience than generic D&D tropes … even though some of those generic tropes are likely to serve them better since THATS the stuff they are likely to see in 5e/pathfinder shovelware. So it does what it sets out to do, and a result you get a TON of variety to interact with, and that alone make this enough to take a look at.

While it may be targeted at new players it’s clearly not targeted at new DM’s. In fact, this would be one of the more difficult things for a mid-level DM to run. It’s system neutral, so our DM will be stat’ing everything either in advance or on the fly. The maps don’t have grids because “I think it’s important you redraw them yourself.” Further, the rooms are not really evocatively described and the details tend to focus on mechanics rather than evocative. There also tends to be a stronger focus on “gotcha!” traps than I would prefer. That may be personal preference, but I think it’s bullshit traps that lead to paranoid player play that slows things down. Searching every 10; of hallway and 30 minute descriptions of searching and opening doors. This is not to say traps are bad, but BAD traps are bad. 🙂 Each room has a “Lesson” to learn, that’s a kind of designers note on the purpose of the room, but could also be seen as DM text … if the entire thing wasn’t DM text.

Which is not to say this is a boring adventure, it’s just a very hit & miss thing. There are great things like a magic ring that lets you take out an eyeball to see … that’s about a million times better than generic clairvoyance rings. There are goblins you will elect you king and follow you as your minions … until they murder you during the next full moon. And, they have sticky skin to boot! An ultra-powerful lich-like guy you can talk to and maybe exploit … with a usual push your luck until he gets annoyed with you. This is great non-standard content and is the kind of content I WANT to pay for.

This thing lacks focus. It needs to figure out what it wants to be, burn the thing down to that, and rebuild it. Expert DM & new players? New players & DM? The core of creativity and variety is there, it’s just doesn’t really know what it wants to do. It has an idea, it states so explicitly, but I don’t think the stated idea matches what’s presented. So, overall, I have some philosophical disagreements about some of the content, but the conversational style and lack of focus is what I think makes it fall short of its own goals. As a general adventure, it’s got a lot of stuff to interact with and some decent new content, like the magic ring and goblins, that make it appealing, it just doesn’t do a good job being organized or evocative.

This is available on the Coins & Scrolls blog, and can be downloaded for free at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwIV4ttS3R1JZGp2TGl6YTNDZjg/view

Review A – The Pretty Girl

Tomb of the Serpent Kings
By Skerples
Self-published
Total Score: 11 (out of 22)

Intended for, “New Players” this module nobly sets out teach the basics of advanced D&D Gameplay from the 2.0 – 3.5 era. Overshooting that goal, in the hands of an experienced GM this module could be pulled from to entertain any experience level players. Intentionally or incidentally, the methodical attempt to present a variety of 2-3.5 style encounters generated a nice variety. The degree of creativity in the module would be wasted on new players still bewildered on how to use ropes and cross bridges without sufficient support from a very experienced (and patient) GM. The assertion that the GM should make their own wandering encounter table was uncool.

 

Optimal Applications
Experienced GM Able to role-play NPC’s, take advantage of creative ques, and comfortable generating stats for their chosen game system easily.
Any player group The adventure could work for anyone

 

Rating Breakdown
GM Complexity 5
Player Amusement 2
Graphics 1
Language 1
Maps 2

Ratings Meanings

Optimal Application – Circumstance where this module would provide maximum benefit. All scores assume that the module is with the group most likely to enjoy and benefit from it

GM Complexity – Degree of effort required to generate a delightful game in optimal application of the material:

  • 6 – GM could open the document with no preparation and run a delightful game
  • 5 – GM would need to read through the campaign and expect to spend 1-2 hours preparing for each 4 hours of game play
  • 4 – GM would be required to reorganize campaign somewhat and smooth over some shortcomings spending 3-4 hours preparing for each 4 hours of game play
  • 1 – There are some innovative sections (encounters) that could be inserted into a different campaign, or linked together in a fully original way, but the material in its entirety cannot be utilized as is without investing a significant degree of GM effort and creativity
  • 0 – Material provides no more value than a random encounter table while presenting such an arduous unraveling it would be foolish to attempt running

Player Amusement – Quality of material presented that has the possibility to delight the optimal player group

  • 5 – Thoughtful pacing and ample opportunities to feel immersed in the game world, “Better than “Cats”, going to see it again and again”
  • 2 – It’s fine
  • 0 – Relationships between players and patients with the game itself will be challenged. Material creates multiple opportunities for rule quibbling and general discord

 

Graphics

  • 4 – Usable during the game to share with players
  • 2 – Useful only to GM
  • 1 – No graphics
  • 0 – Of no discernable purpose and in the way – crowds space

 

Language

  • 4 – Succinct and evocative
  • 2 – Conversational but clear
  • 1 – You should have hired an English Major to edit this
  • 0 – Very wordy/ incomprehensible

 

Maps

  • 3 – It’s a shame that you are trying to keep some information a surprise as the maps are so delightful you want to hang them on the wall and show them off
  • 2 – There are maps, they are legible
  • 1 – There are no maps
  • 0 – The included maps create logical inconsistencies with the written material that are difficult to catch
Posted in Reviews | 14 Comments

Dungeon Magazine #142

Posted on July 8, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


Masque of Dreams
By B. Matthew Conklin III
Level 1

Masquerade ball. Oasis. Archeological dig. Drugged food. Pretty close to shitty trope bingo! This has a social/ball/roleplaying element that then changes when the ball attendees all (except for the party) become drugged and behave bizarrely before goblins show up to attack. Tracking them through the desert the party arrives at a camp, kills the boss, and save the kidnapped guests. The adventure gets the NPC’s right, using the masquarade to give them a ‘look’ that is simple but memorable, and giving them a solid roleplaying personality, both before and after the drugging. Simple, iconic, and terse, at least as far as Dungeon is concerned. The vulture mask people follow the party around waiting for them to kill something, talk about how things taste and how to dispose of the bodies, etc. They could use a summary sheet, and there are probably too many of them presented for the amount of ‘action’ in the adventure. IE: they would work better if the “ball is attacked!” portion of the adventure was a bit more in-depth. There’s also a mix of events, room descriptions, and NPC descriptions scattered willy nilly, in a room based description style that doesn’t work with a social adventure style. It’s disorganized and hard to find things. I THINK it’s trying to be open, almost like a sandbox, with the monsters/attack, but it comes off as just some loose notes with not enough structure to support the other material. A complete rewrite would save this … and it might be worth it.

Here There Be Monsters
By Jason Bulmahn
Level 7

Your ship crashes on the Isle of Dread and you need to travel overland to get to a colony. What follows is a linear group of set pieces broken up by unavoidable events. T-rex attacks on the beach. Herbivore attack. Gargoyles on a cliff. Demon ape kidnaps a party member, and you go to the temple to rescue them. The encounters are ok but it FEELS like a series of linear set-pieces, surrounded, of course, by too much text. There’s a nice little mini-Moria where you have to go through a small eight room ruins to get through some mountains to the other side. The pieces ARE iconic, but there’s no chance to really do anything but stare blankly and roll dice for eventual outcomes. It’s hard to get in to something like this. This reminds me of those shitty ass DM’s who think they are “telling a story.” I can’t imagine anything more boring, iconic set pieces or no. You know it’s a set up. Why care? But … I still like the individual encounters. 🙂 They are just too long.

Bright Mountain King
By Caine Chandler
Level 16

This is a short eight room tomb to retrieve a stolen artifact for some dwarves. WHo are pretending to be good guys but are evil with a ring of mind shielding. Ug. A sure sign of lack of creativity. Anyway, then you’re supposed to go get the artifact back from the evil druids the dwarf dude gave it to by invading a small underground/cave fortress with a dozen-ish rooms. It’s just an excuse to roll high-level trap saves and hack everything. It’s also COMPLETELY unclear to me how you find out the dwarf was tricking you. He thanks you for getting the artifact (the first time) then turns flies off with it. These high level adventures are such a disappointment.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 6 Comments

Blue Crystal Mine

Posted on July 5, 2017 by Bryce Lynch

By Matt Kline
Creation’s Edge Games
Swords & Wizardry
Levels 1-3

An elven smith has recently relearned the long-lost secret art of crafting with the blue crystal known as azurite. He’s promised to craft you a few magic weapons, provided you can get him some of the crystal…

A fourteen page adventure with eight rooms in an old mine. I wish this adventure, and all of its cousins, did not exist. Boring, adding nothing of interest or indeed any detail beyond the barest of bare bones, but expanded upon with great vigor of writing. There is no reason for this to exist, let alone be charged for.

Eight room abandoned mine, four bandits in the entrance their leader in another room and a giant spider in a boarded up barracks. The back half is caved in, with a couple of giants ants and a crystal imp back there. There’s an arrow trap on a door. I have now provided you 95% of the content of this adventure in far fewer than 14 pages. I know, I’m prone to hyperbole, but, seriously, I just described the dungeon to you. The actual adventure offers almost nothing else that I didn’t just describe. The text is expanded upon, but, I’m not even sure it adds that sort of mundane detail in which I loathe so much. It’s just circular, describing nothing in quite the verbose manner.

An empty barracks room with a few generic things in it. The same, bt this time the room has a giant spider in it. The same, but the bandits leader is in it, who, of course, chalks up the slaughter of his men to them fighting … so there’s a pretext for him not leaving his room. Everyone/thing attacks on sight. There’s no nuance. There’s nothing interesting. Open door. Monster attacks. Kill it. Move on.

When you buy an adventure this is exactly the sort of thing you are afraid of: nothing of interest. Look, an adventure doesn’t need set pieces in every room. Or ANY room. But you have to add SOME value. The fourteen pages of this adventure add almost nothing to the three sentence description I offered earlier. This is like one of those procedurally generated news stories. Write an app to generate maps and random dungeon with random dressings and charge $1.50 each. Churn it out and ‘win’ by flooding the market and making it impossible to find things of value. THERE’S NOTHING IN THIS.

 

It’s $1.50 on Drive Thru. The preview of four pages, including the cover, and shows you nothing of the room design.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/214985/Blue-Crystal-Mine-A-Swords–Wizardry-MiniDungeon?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments

10’+1: The Flooded Temple

Posted on July 3, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


Welcome to Tenfootpole +1. Today you can expect the same old vitriol from Bryce, as well as a dose in the form of another review of the same adventure from The Pretty Girl. Lucky You!

We Begin!

By M. Greis
Greis Games
OSR
Levels 1-3

In the flooded temple is hidden a great treasure, and the adventures are in race to get there first, but the ancient temple is the home of Death’s Messenger and several cults each with their own agenda. Will the adventurers survive or be dragged off to the lands of the dead?

Review 1 – Bryce Lynch

This is a seventeen page adventure in a three level abandoned temple with about 25 rooms. There are multiple factions, puzzle-like things, weird monsters, an evocative environment, a moderately interesting map and MOSTLY terse text, at least for the DM notes. This is a good adventure. As I told The Pretty Girl yesterday: if all adventures were at least this good then I probably wouldn’t be reviewing adventures.

There’s this old almost forgotten temple in a canyon. Think of a slot canyon, like in Zion, or Petra. At the end of it is a temple, carved in to the soft rock. There’s a small stream running in the narrow canyons, and it flows in through a large crack, flooding the lower level to two feet. Inside are kobolds, at deaths door, victims of plague, they come here to die as a part of their death rituals. There are lizardmen, fishing. There are bugbear teens, undergoing their adulthood rites. None are hostile. The kobolds want to be left in peace to die. Filled with puss-filled bubos, they represent more of a trap (the plague) that is solved by roleplaying, sicne they are too weak to fight. The bugbears assume other people in the temple are undergoing their adulthood rites also. They tell ghost stories and boast by their campfire. The lixardmen would really like the other two groups gone, and will pay 1sp a head for kobolds. Then, in to this mix come some Dragon cultists looking for the PRETEXT. Again, not necessarily hostile .. but perhaps the parties pretext is to find the object first? IN which case it might be the party instigating.

Multiple factions are supplemented by a map that really allows for more complex explorations. There are, I think, like six staircases in the place, in addition to an open three-level area with balconies around it. This allows for stealth and a hunted/hunter thing to go on with any of the factions or the cult, once the party turns hostile. I think I counted four or five ways to get in to the temple besides the front door: a hole in the roof, the stream crack, a couple of windows … really nice sandbox design that allows for the exploratory and strategic play styles.

The faction monsters all allow for roleplay … that can then potentially end in combat, usually with the party instigating for some reason. In addition they all have a little detail, tersely communicated, and then some extra bits which are GREAT. It’s not just kobolds. They are dying/near death. And not just near death but from from plague. And not just plague but with bubos full of pus. Likewise the bugbears. Who are are on a adulthood rite. Who have ritually painted faces described. Who tell ghost stories at night around their fire. It’s just an extra sentence but it add SO much to the adventure. It’s what I’m referring to when I say things lie “plant an evocative seed in the DM’s head.” That’s the sort of content I want to pay for. Not reams and reams of text. Not railroady or dictatorial. One extra sentence that brings the adventure alive.

Puzzles, roleplaying, tactical options via the map, a timeline/order of battle for the cult that enters the temple. It’s all great and it’s clear it was written by someone who UNDERSTANDS how D&D works. This is further cemented by notes. XP for Gold notes. XP for rooms explored, and how it can push the party deeper in to a dungeon. The guy gets it.

Monsters are either book, such as the kobolds, lizardmen, bugbears, or new ones with the new ones being mostly of the tentacle-monster variety. As I noted earlier, the humanoids have something about them to bring them to life, while the new ones have great little combat powers that can really help mae combat evocative without being a drag. This is generally supplemented by some rooms have terrain effects; things under the water, etc, to spice up combat. 4e did this a lot but it felt forced, like a wargame. This does it in such a way that it feels natural. The new magic items are great and have a ”effects front” style. What does it do, then some brief mechanics. A Frogs Breath vial, that when uncorked has a greenish mist that flows out and can ID magic items … but then you need to recapture the mist. Great! A little twist to make things fresh and fun again … with just a hint of folklore.

This is a danish translation and it shows sometimes. A few of the puzzles are not formatted in the best way and you feel like you have to fight a text a bit in those more complex areas in order to figure out what is going on. There is some awkwardness in wording in a few other places, but it doesn’t distract enough to matter and overall it’s a testament to the translator. I might note, as well, that the word choice in places relies on conclusions. A smell is “foul”. I get what they are going for, but, that’s a conclusion. Describe the thing and then let the party make the determination that its foul. The readaloud is best when it’s not describing room dimensions but being evocative, and the DM text is thankfully short in most places. The introduction text is long, describing the factions, etc, but, read once, it does a great job of cementing the flavor in to your head, painting a picture so you grok it and need never look at it again. Which is exactly what the hell that shit should do. The boat captain mentioned in the “journey to the temple” section could have used a one or two word personality, as well as what happens to him/the boat when the cultists show up. But that’s really nitpicky of me.

As I look through my notes it seems like I made several notations on each page about little things the designer did right. If I were doing a second pass on this I might clean up the readaloud by making it shorter and a little more evocative and cleaning up the language and formatting in the more complex puzzle rooms. It’s system neutral, with no monster stats, which is LAME. Just stick in some LabLord stats for christs sake. If the designer had done that then this would be a GREAT adventure with almost zero prep. Read it once in 15 minutes and run it. As it is now you gotta state everything.

This is $2 on DriveThru and I think that’s a bargain for the adventure you are getting. The preview is six pages long, about a third of the adventure. It will show you those designer notes on xp for hold, some decent hooks (standard stuff, but well supported for the DM without being too verbose), faction information on page three (listed as page four) and in the last two pages a good sample of the adventure text. I really like what you are getting here: a classic exploratory adventure with some great roleplay and simple timeline elements to spice things up, with evocative descriptions.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/214529/The-Flooded-Temple–an-OSR-adventure?affiliate_id=1892600

 

 

Review A – The Pretty Girl

The Flooded Temple
By M. Greis
Greis Games
Total Score: 13

 

Optimal Applications
Experienced GM Able to role-play NPC’s, take advantage of creative ques, and comfortable generating stats for their chosen game system easily.
Moderately Experienced player group Must understand how to play and enjoy non-combat encounter

 

Rating Breakdown
GM Complexity 5
Player Amusement 5
Graphics 0
Language 1
Maps 2

Ratings Meanings

Optimal Application – Circumstance where this module would provide maximum benefit. All scores assume that the module is with the group most likely to enjoy and benefit from it

GM Complexity – Degree of effort required to generate a delightful game in optimal application of the material:

  • 6 – GM could open the document with no preparation and run a delightful game
  • 5 – GM would need to read through the campaign and expect to spend 1-2 hours preparing for each 4 hours of game play
  • 4 – GM would be required to reorganize campaign somewhat and smooth over some shortcomings spending 3-4 hours preparing for each 4 hours of game play
  • 1 – There are some innovative sections (encounters) that could be inserted into a different campaign, or linked together in a fully original way, but the material in its entirety cannot be utilized as is without investing a significant degree of GM effort and creativity
  • 0 – Material provides no more value than a random encounter table while presenting such an arduous unraveling it would be foolish to attempt running

Player Amusement – Quality of material presented that has the possibility to delight the optimal player group

  • 5 – Thoughtful pacing and ample opportunities to feel immersed in the game world, “Better than “Cats”, going to see it again and again”
  • 2 – It’s fine
  • 0 – Relationships between players and patients with the game itself will be challenged. Material creates multiple opportunities for rule quibbling and general discord

 

Graphics

  • 4 – Usable during the game to share with players
  • 2 – Useful only to GM
  • 1 – No graphics
  • 0 – Of no discernable purpose and in the way – crowds space

 

Language

  • 4 – Succinct and evocative
  • 2 – Conversational but clear
  • 1 – You should have hired an English Major to edit this
  • 0 – Very wordy/ incomprehensible

 

Maps

  • 3 – It’s a shame that you are trying to keep some information a surprise as the maps are so delightful you want to hang them on the wall and show them off
  • 2 – There are maps, they are legible
  • 1 – There are no maps
  • 0 – The included maps create logical inconsistencies with the written material that are difficult to catch
Posted in Reviews | 13 Comments

Dungeon Magazine #141

Posted on July 1, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


The Sea Wyvern’s Wake
By Richard Pett
Level 5

Savage Tide adventure path, part the third: a sea voyage. This installment is hard thing to review. It’s heart is in the right place but it suffers GREATLY from the three-column Dungeon format. Combined with the word-bloat common to Dungeon it makes this thing very hard to run. But … it has great elements. The party is hired to be “ship #2” in a two-ship expedition to a colony on an island and this adventure deals with the voyage. “Ship #2” allows for the party to make their own decisions but for there to a lifeline available. Run the ship how you want and if things are too bad then ship 1 is there is bail you out. And, of course, vice versa in certain situations. There’s an allotment of NPC’s to spice things up on board, some generics to die horrible, and some locations to visit along the way. “Hey kids, Meteor Crater is right on the road to the Grand Canyon!” Linear, but not exactly a railroad! The NPC’s have decent motivations and are interesting enough to get them involved with the party. As always, they could be organized better for use during play … a typical failing. But, still, recurring folks on a three-month voyage is a great thing to have! And their detail is PLAY focused, not just generic trivia that will never come up during play. There’s too much detail in place, such a entire column of text on “securing a vessel” when much less would have sufficed in an adventure that’s a follow on to capturing a vessel. In other places a little more could have been included, such as better help in recruiting crew and provisions in town before the party leaves. Similarly, there’s a small section, a column or less, on ship combat, but it suffers from the Dungeon 3-column text block problem, making it hard to reference during play. There are a few other nits, like a priest who dies a day after getting sick to reveal a slaad … nice, but if it were dragged out a bit it would be even nicer. Also, a stowaway assassin that takes a DC30 to find if the party searches the ship … because there’s an event built around them. The players should be REWARDED for thinking of searching the hold, not punished because it’s on the DM’s ToDo list for later. The thing is full of nice little vignettes and encounters on the way to the island. In short, I think it’s a pretty damn good sea/travel adventure, one of the best I’ve seen. It needs more expansion before town is left, and reference sheets for important things like NPC’s, combat, etc, and a complete rewrite of the encounters to pull out important details … but it’s heart is in the right place. It just needs a complete reworking to be useful …

Swords of Dragonlake
By Nicolas Logue
Level 12

2p backstory
Holy fuck, what a mess. This is an investigation in to a missing person … at a theater. Ug. Fucking Magical RenFaire shit. Anyway, there re about a thousand NPC’s, each of which get almost an entire page to describe them, along with an entire section on Gather Information checks for each one. MASSIVE amounts of text and a unfocused writing style make this one a bear. “In addition to the dressing rooms, the PC’s may decide to investigate the grid-like iron catwalk and rafters above the stage from which the moving scenery pieces [long list] and heavy sandbag counterweight are suspended.” Yes, Nicolas, they might. Which is why I, the DM, and looking at the “Fly Rail and Grid” section of the fucking adventure. This kind of crap just clogs things up. Scene/Event based and a mass of text make salvaging this one a losing cause.

Vlindarian’s Vault
By Jonathan M. Richards
Level 18

Oh man … can you accept the fact that the city has a storage facility/warehouse that has a bunch of slaadi employees? If so then do I ever have the Grimtooths adventure for you! You’re pleaded with to rescue a guys mate from a vault where she’s being held captive. There’s some nonsense about them being disguised silver dragons, but that’s irrelevant. This adventure JUMPS in to things immediately. Seriously, the keyed locations start on page 2 and I’m not sure I’ve EVER seen a Dungeon backstory/into that short! And the intro even includes a bullshit plan involving a magical shield and portable hole to smuggle the party inside the storage vault! It’ all feels a little Harry Potter/Gringotts, with a healthy dose of Grimtooth. Walls of Force that appear and disappear, teleport circles, rolling boulders. And every guard is either a slaad or devil, with the boss being a beholder. The maps a fucking disaster and needs a cross-section to clarify the confusing relationship between the levels and corridors. I’m going to forgive the abstracted treasure because the entire thing is so ridiculous. I love it! No gimping. High level. Absurd enemies and deathtraps! A glorious glorious mess! A little (lot) restatting could make this a fine low-level adventure also. Hard to recommend to seek out, but if you NEED this sort of adventure then this is IT.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 6 Comments

Binding the Wind

Posted on June 28, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


By John Mcnabb & Matthew Roth
McNabb Games
Generic/Universal
Level??

Piracy is an omnipresent threat while sailing the open seas, and none are more formidable than the treacherous slavers that seek more than simple cargo. Often putting their newly captured stock to use in the rowing banks of galleys, these predators prowl the trade lanes and get rich off the suffering of others. Among the flesh-traders, the Iron Windrunner is a ship of no small renown. It owes its fame to its namesake, an air elemental restrained in enchanted iron bondage. Thanks to a complex system of gauged pipes, this living wind engine propels the galley to nearly unparalleled speed on open sea while keeping the traditional oars for finer maneuvering.

Eight Pages! Either this is a tightly written masterpiece or I’ve been ripped off. What are the odds?

It’s a pirate ship with a captured air elemental. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? My life is a living fucking hell.

You get: a detailed explanation of the ship. A paragraph on each of the half-dozen notable NPC’s. There’s nothing else here but reams of “hot notes” describing tactics and behaviors. There’s NOTHING in this. Nothing is particularly evocative. There’s nothing special about the fucking ship except it has got an air elemental. It takes eight pages to do what one paragraph could do.

So, there’s your two problems: it’s not a fucking adventure and it’s boring as fuck. It is, at best, an encounter.

In retrospect the cover says “ENCOUNTER” on it. The publisher’s text doesn’t say shit about that though. I fucking HATE IT when people don’t disclose what the fuck they are selling. That fucking joke Castle Greyhawk adventure wounded me deep.

And it’s boring. It’s just pirates. They swing up alongside, fire ballista, board the ship … we, as consumers, are paying for imagination. For inspiration. Far too often we get shit. I feel like this thing is the equivalent of paying for an orc guardroom.

“1. Guardroom. Four orcs at a table shooting dice.” I’ll expand it to eight pages later. You all owe me $1 now. Pay up.

It’s $1 on DriveThru. The preview is two pages long, showing the cover and title page. Note that the cover has FUCK ALL to do with the adventure, except, you know, pirates.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/213667/Binding-the-Wind?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews, The Worst EVAR? | 4 Comments

Perils of the Sunken City

Posted on June 26, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


By Jon Marr
Purple Sorcerer Games
Dungeon Crawl Classics
Level 0 Funnel

The Great City is old and faded, a pale reflection of its former glory. Life is a challenge for most, but for the weak and unconnected, the city is a place of unrelenting hardship harboring neither hope nor promise of escape. With one exception: the Sunken City. Most find death in the crumbling ruins that stretch beyond sight into the mists; once rich districts now claimed by swamp and dark denizens. But for the desperate few, the ruins offer treasures the Great City denies them: fortune, glory, and a fighting chance!

This seventeen page funnel has about thirteen to twenty encounters areas and a small starting locale. It has a writing style that, while not terse, does an excellent job of communicating the flavor of the encounter. This is combined with a layout style that makes the mechanics of areas easy to find. There’s a good mix of encounter types, from mundane to undead to weird, with a couple of the encounters being truly excellent pieces of design. I dub thee “Easy to Run!” … if a bit bland in some of the corners.

The publisher’s blurb does a decent job of introducing the scene: a great city, overtaken by the swamp. On it’s edge is a small settlement from which scum (IE: adventurers) set forth. Condemned criminals seeking pardon, apprentices, etc, all form up small bands and head off. It’s an environment that appeals to me, the small insular murder hobo community with its own culture. Purple Jon does a good job here of communicating the culture of the place and it’s the first example of a descriptive style that’s rare … and very good.

I’m fond of quoting a section from Spawning Grounds of the Crab-Men, a room that has an ld retired hill giant named Old Bay. He’ll pay for dead crabs and his cave smells of butter. The room is a couple of paragraphs long but if you read it ONCE then you’ve got the vibe and can run it from memory. It’s sticky. I talk a lot about terseness in descriptive style, all for the purpose of helping the DM run the thing at the table. The ying to that yang is sticky. You don’t have to be terse if you can be sticky. That’s dangerous territory though since EVERYTHING is likely to be sticky to the designer. But when it happens it’s great to behold. This adventure is sticky.

The little outpost of murder hobos can be read once. The little section on the approach to the sunken city, with six or seven locales, can be read once. The four or so outside encounters can be read once. The main aboveground encounter can be read once. It all stays with you, at least enough so that when you look at the map you can recall it. This is all supported by the layout and formatting which makes it easy to find the mechanical bits. “Oh yeah, that’s the room with the tentacles that do weird stuff … “ and in the text the bullet format and bolding makes finding that “weird stuff” trivial to locate. The writing did an excellent job of giving me the vibe while the layout & formatting did an excellent job of making the mechanics & specifics easy to find. IE: It supported the DM, exactly what it’s supposed to do.

I want to focus on one encounter as an example of good encounter design. It’s one of the best in the adventure and I think many could learn from it. There’s a grotto underground. The witter glitters with glowing scarlet crayfish (window dressing.) There’s an island out in the middle … with something sparkling on it. You see a massive shadow swim under the water. TEXTBOOK tease. Everybody, from the DM to the players, knows that fucking water is a deathtrap … and yet … what’s that sparkle? It’s the kind of shit that makes players eyes light up. Wacky plans ensue. D&D is played. The treasure is a real treasure, not a rip off DM screw job. There are some things around … stalactites, giant braziers that could be boats … This is GREAT design and, again, once read it stays you and the mechanics of the treasure and monster and so on are easy to pull out of the (column) of text.

That room does something else, it provides some unexplained stuff, a mystery, about the monster. This happens routinely in the adventure; things are introduced that have a mystery to them. A giant ‘Warden’ who stalks the entry. A demon in a pillar that teleports. It’s not missing information, its writing in such a way that DOESN’T explain, but at best just hints at, letting the DM run with things and expand as need be. This is the kind of writing that fires the imagination.

The maps are clear with just enough art to contribute to helping the DM recall the rooms. There’s even a cross-section or two to help the DM understand some elevation elements … Excellent! But, alas, all is not well in Sunken City-ville.

Some of the encounters are a bit … mundane. Possemmen are great! Armadillo-cros are great! Yet Another Skeleton Encounter is less than stellar, as is “Generic Slime creatures.” This isn’t much of a condemnatio; most adventures have some rooms that are weaker than others. It’s just that the more mundane rooms could have been kicked up a bit, perhaps with more environmental/room details to make the encounters a bit more fun. There’s also a bit of a screw-job encounter, an arena the characters are forced in to and then a dungeon/hole they must enter to escape the certain death in it. It’s got a lot going on in it, with lightning walls, ghosts, spikes, death traps, and so on, but it FEELS forced. DCC published adventures can tend to the linear side of the spectrum but generally don’t feel forced. The arena encounter in this does.

This is $5 ar DriveThru. The preview is four pages and shows off the writing for the like murder bobo-ville and the general locales on the way to the sunken city. It does a good job showing off the “sticky” writing style. I challenge you to read those four pages and then look at the map and start running the game in your head. Should be trivial. It’s a travesty it took me this long to review a Purple Sorcerer adventure.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/102457/Perils-of-the-Sunken-City-DCC-RPG?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 0, No Regerts | 12 Comments

Dungeon Magazine #140

Posted on June 24, 2017 by Bryce Lynch


The Bullywug Gambit
By Nicolas Logue
Level 3

Savage Tide adventure path part two. When the synopsis contains “the party must then race to …” then I’m predisposed to not like it. “Stilt-walking monks” is something I would use if I were lampooning a genre. You are tracking down the tool from the first adventure. First have to journey to a village, but rowboat, sailing ship, or overland, varying by days to reach the village. Your choice is meaningless since nothing changes in the village. In spite of this the village scene is a good one. Rabid animals tearing each other apart, a bay oil slick on fire … the read-aloud sucks shit but the concept is a good one in spite. It doesn’t help that everything is all mixed together in the DM notes, making pulling out useful information difficult. It’s as if someone managed to successfully describe, in generalities, the vibe from the DCO intro … but buried it in the DM text and all specifics were instead terrible generalities. It’s full of embedded backstory shit, but it’s ALMOST got ahold of something good with the savagery vibe. This sort of “Rage virus” like 28 days later thing is pretty nice. There are a few challenges back in the main town, you know, the one you raced to to prevent your employer from being killed in revenge, making your way through some parade encounters including the ridiculous stilt-walking monks. Finally, you get to stop a bullywug attack on your employer’s house … which is very poorly handled, described like a typical exploration adventure instead of a more lightweight assault-type type adventure with tactics, etc. The outline of this adventure and it’s concepts are not bad and in some cases have some very nice imagery associated with them. But the endless embedded backstory, boring read-aloud, crappily organized DM text all contribute to something hard to run. A rewrite of this chapter could be something to look forward to.

The Fall of Graymalkin Academy
By Mark A. Hall
Level 9

An assault/looting on a magic school that is now a war zone, with four faction vying for control. Kind of Hogwarts if the final battle went on two months and has settled down in to a less fierce campaign. Dead students, magic books, little magical features. The map could have used some shading to show which areas were under whose control. Another good idea that needs at least? of the words eliminated and the rest rewritten to be more evocative. The faction play combined with a wizard school battle aftermath make this interesting. Summoning circles, greenhouses, labs … the entire Hogwarts is here to explore.

Heart of Hellfire Mountain
By Dave Coulson
Level 20

Convinced/hired by a fire giant king to wipe out an evil temple in the nearby mountains. This is just a simple temple assault where the defenders are fire giants and devils, with little advice about the defenders responding. These sorts of things remind me more of mini’s gaming than RPG’s. You CAN do assaults RPG-style, but these high level ones, especially, just seem like excuses to combine kits and stats and make EL-appropriate encounters. *sigh* high-level D&D …

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 9 Comments