tenfootpole.org

By Joe Johnston II
Taskboy Games
Labyrinth Lord
Level 4-6

Every fool knows that a cornered conjurer is a most dangerous foe. But a truly wise wizard will always have a fallback plan to use when victory eludes him. A secret place cached with treasure, filled with monsters and guarded by dweomercraft most subtle is the defeated magician’s best friend. It is also a juicy plum for professional adventurers. Care to take a bite?

This 44 page digest adventure describes a twenty room dungeon in about twenty pages, with the rest being monsters, magic items, preg-gens, etc. It’s mostly a linear dungeon with a few branching rooms. I’d call this a funhouse dungeon, with iconic adventure tropes appearing in many of the rooms. It’s got some layout issues, gets long/redundant in places, and generally has bits and pieces of decent descriptions. If the layout/map/etc issues were resolved then I’d say this is one good edit away from being a pretty decent funhouse adventure.

Fair warning: I have a fondness for the classics. Waterfalls need a cave behind them, etc, and this adventure has that in spades. There’s a room with statues that ask riddles. There’s a dragon on a treasure pile that you can talk to. There are damsels on a rock in an underground lake. There’s an etting in a room with three magic fountains. A large mushroom forms a mouth to issue a warning. At times this is a like a who’s who of classic D&D room types.

The rooms have some decent imagery associated with them. A door with an evil fetish of chicken bones, feathers, and a ruddy brown stain. Nice! Odious vines. Statues illuminated with blue light from within. A statue face on a wall of a desiccated zombie with a mouth distorted into a rictus of hunger. These are pretty good descriptions. They get an image across to the DM immediately and these sorts of descriptions are not uncommon in the adventure. “Large” pods is not very descriptive. A common issue with much adventure writing is resorting to these common adjectives and adverbs. Large and big are both boring words. EVen if you don’t go full on Jabberwocky there’s always a thesaurus.

But these descriptions also tend to be buried in the text. “Stairs descend for about 20’ into a 40’ passageway ending in a door. The door is locked. Normal lock picking rules apply.” I wonder if normal combat rules also apply in combat? And it’s somewhat remiss to not tell us that normal gravity rules apply? It’s IS useful to know the room dimensions, since, you know, they are also right there on the map that we just looked at to get the room numbers, etc. You know, the central piece of information for all DM’s that’s almost always the centerpiece of the reference material they use. Oh, wait …. NOT useful. That’s right. REDUNDANT. It’s this redundancy, on both counts, that drives me crazy, especially with an adventure like this that is close to being acceptable.

The number one rule in adventures, published ones anyway, is that they are technical document, a reference for the DM. The implications of that statement will vary based on the type of adventure what section of the adventure, but it always needs to be on the designer’s mind. For room keys there needs to (ALMOST always) be a focus. What’s the DM need to know first? Usually this is the description; the short and evocative text that shoves an idea seed in to the DM’s head where it can grow and flourish and they can then ad-lib and fill in for the rest of the room. It’s. Not. The. Fucking. Room. Dimensions. First, it’s on the map. The map that’s almost always in front of the DM. No, putting it in the key is not good. More is not better. It distracts from the DMs attention. Suddenly there is trivia, useless information, that I must dig through in order to get to the stuff I NEED to run the room. I’m hot on overloading the map with detail because of this; it’s always there and can support a lot of the mundane needs of the DM without detracting from the evocative part of the room. Give me a terse and evocative room description then another paragraph of a couple of sentences that follows up on it. You don’t need tons of mechanics. You don’t need to spell everything out. You’ve got a DM there. Allude to things. Give the DM room to blossom.

I’m being overly harsh on Joe, the designer. This isn’t garbage, he does have some good descriptions and room ideas (and good magic items, for that matter), it’s just clogged up with the mistakes I’ve seen hundreds of times before. The difference here is that those adventures generally had few redeeming qualities, unlike some of Joes descriptions and room ideas. I feel like Joe is close. Take a room. Work it. Rewrite it. Focus. Have the magic click.

I’m also more than a little annoyed that the map is split over two pages in the (middle) of the book. I don’t know, I guess it’s digest sized and that takes some allowance, but I find those hard to read, and reference in play, and print out/photocopy for my DM screen. No, I don’t have solution. I’m just a jerk that way.

This is $2 on DriveThru. The preview is six pages, but it’s all intro stuff. I wish these previews would more often show you an example of the technical writing.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/148906/Tranzars-Redoubt?affiliate_id=1892600

Finally, there’s a thread over at RPGGEEK where they are building a community dungeon. I’ve been critiquing their rooms. One of them, username=PurpleBrocoli, had a kind of meandering writing style that they cleaned up quite a bit and turned in something that meets my approval. Several others are rewriting their rooms also, and I do in to detail on most of the rooms, noting the trivia and so on.

Fuck if I know how to direct link to Purple rooms …
https://rpggeek.com/geeklist/228624/lets-make-dungeon-together-critique
https://rpggeek.com/thread/1825853/lets-make-dungeon-together/page/4

By Oswald
Self Published
LotFP
Levels 1-3?

The atheneum was a center of learning which became the headquarters of a dangerous cult. Where forgotten ones hoped to be chosen for the pure land. Their rituals went wrong during the city’s raid. Now it’s been forgotten inside its containment cube for 50 years. Until a secret entrance was found in the basement of a nearby house. Only the players have access to this hidden chamber for now.

This nineteen page adventure is a three level tower with about fifty rooms in it. It describes a ruined home/library in a city that has been magically walled off … and now has a tunnel coming in from underneath from a nearby home. Greed, or searching for something specific, the factions and weirdness inside make this like a more active/interactive/action-oriented Tower of the Stargazer.

This is an interesting little adventure, something like a mix between Stargazer and maybe Spire of Iron & Crystal. The default hook is, as described, a loot-the-place-we-just-found-the-way-in adventure. The map here is three levels with various parts of the levels, especially the second, blocked off from other areas because of a collapsed floor. You can see them, both from below and on the the second level, and there are multiple stairs and ways up. This makes the map one of the better ones I’ve seen lately. It offers tantalizing scenes that pull the players in certain directions.

This also allows for faction play, with five being detailed. Where they live, what they want, and how they are related to each other. Billy needs a couple of things, then he can become The Chosen One and kill the Queen in the queen faction. There’s an interconnectedness here that many/most dungeons don’t have and that kicks things up a notch, particularly with the factions and their relationship to each other.

This is complimented by a nice overview of the street the house is on, and a timeline of what happens on the street, all on a small and well laid-out section of a page, almost like bullet points. I can’t compliment the format enough. It covers all sorts of things to make the OUTSIDE portion of the house, as the party retreat and re enter, as much fun as the inside, if not more so. Nosy neighbors, street scenes, gangs moving in; it’s well done and is exactly what you’re hoping to see when you want to make the OUTSIDE of the dungeon lively. It’s enough to get your imagination going and run an entire little vignette, or twele, but doesn’t do it either by droning on or boring you with generic random encounters.

The various encounters in the house range from weird vignettes, like corpses, that set the mood, to encounters that almost have a dream-like feel to them. If you go through a certain secret door, to a secret garden, you meet your mother. You know it’s her, even though she’s wearing a mask. She tells you not to go back through the door, because there are monsters there who killed your father. She can also give you a bonus. There’s a heavy innocence and innocence-lost theme to things. Pans lost boys fifty years later, as children who could have been The Chosen One (ala Potter to CS Lewis) They are weird, not in a gonzo way but in a slightly off kilter melancholy way.

The adventure isn’t perfect and I can point out a couple of flaws. The first is a little petty. The very first words of the first level tell us that every surface of the library walls is covered with shelves and overstuffed with books. This leads to the inevitable questions of “what are their titles and can we systematically loot and sell them?” … neither of which is addressed. A book title generator and/or value/quality system would have hooked in nicely with the timeline and factions, as the players “mine” the books and deal with the factions and the goings on in the tunnel house and the street outside of it. That would have been an excellent tie in.

The designer could also use a little more evocative language and scene setting. “Iron railing connects the pillars.” or “central spiral stairs leads to the middle chamber.” or “Each chamber has a skeleton, stacks of books, a cot, a chamber pot, writing utensils and paper.” These examples are all not at the sterling heights of evocative imagery. It’s important that the text be arranged to make sense to the DM and also to jam a scene in to their head.

This is PWYW on DriveThru, with a suggested price of … $0! That’s right, it’s free! The preview doesn’t work, but, hey, it’s free, and worth checking out.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/217721/The-Atheneum-of-Yearning?affiliate_id=1892600

By (Uncredited)
Unbalanced Dice Games
Labyrinth Lord
Mid-Level

The party must go to the tower the giant took with him when he ran away. Something is bugging the Duke and his Necromancer thinks it has to do with the tower. The tower must be explored and the purgative put in every room. Will they have an easy time doing this? Of course not. The tower is dangerous but someone else has taken residence up very close to it. Only by entering the tower will they find out who that is…

!!!I DON’T KNOW!!!

This is a 43 page six-level dungeon with about 65 rooms in it. I don’t know how to summarize it. The rooms feel random, but connected by an overall theme. It’s like junior high kid wrote a D&D adventure … and english wasn’t their first language but they were fluent in it but they were raised in a skinner box with only the LabLord rules. It’s all basic and to the point, simplistic almost to the point of being iconic. This is BARE BONES … but not minimally keyed. It’s somehow one step above that.

After I bought this and cracked it I had a sudden realization: I had seen this style before. Looking back it became clear: I had no fucking idea what was up with the previous product I reviewed and I have no idea what is up with this one.

Nearby is part of a tower and attached to it is a giant that has been turned to stone. You’re hired to go put some magic salt in every room in order to put to rest the spirit haunting the Duke every night. The tower has three levels and the giant has been hollowed out in to three levels also. The magic salt thing is an interesting way to get the party in to every room and to explore all levels/rooms. It also has the kind of old timey folklore vibe that I groove on.

The maps are pretty good, with decent looping and variety of design. The treasure seems light with not nearly enough to justify going in to the place. But, really, the “highlight” here are the encounters. One room has two shovels sticking out of the ground, forming a V. WTF is up with that, you ay ask. I have no idea. You know as much as I. It’s the “shovel themed” area, I guess, cause there’s a zombie digging a hole in another room nearby, and another that like to lie in the holes he’s digging to rest. And another room with a bunch of buried bodies in it with a skeletons hand sticking “partway out of the ground.” One room in the giant has some pink fluid oozing out of it, the giant is still alive and begs you to restore him! Another has a giant stone thumb sticking through the towers wall with a magic sword sticking in it. (Sword, is explicitly stated, has no discernable effects.) The rooms go on and on like this. Almost every one is short.

There is some kind of intelligent hand massaging things here, but the entire thing is unlike almost anything I’ve seen before. The encounters are … simple, but with detail like an icepick. It’s almost like a series of minimally keyed rooms, loosely connected, but with detail then added that is EXACTLY what is needed to bump it up a notch in to “terse & interesting” territory. Your mind races with what is going on. Room three on the top level of the tower has No Ceiling, according to room name: “This area no longer have a ceiling. The sky is visible. Anyone who climbs upwards will be standing on top of the tower. From there they can see everything for a long distance.”

This thing is creative. The zombie laying down in the grave it is digging. The giant still living. The fact that the giant (a folklore giant who just wanted something to eat) has RUN AWAY WITH THE TOWER. Almost all of the writing is direct and to the point.

There’s something WRONG with it though, beyond the light to non-existent treasure. The rooms, while lightly themed, generally creative, and connected to each other (recall all the shovel rooms?) are somehow lacking. It doesn’t feel like a cohesive whole.

Imagine I created a random dungeon from a generator. Then I went through and minimally expanded the rooms a bit, and themed them a bit, to turn the randomness in to a decent little room idea. That’s what this thing feels like, this sort of vibe of things being random or unconnected or somehow off center.

It’s hard to recommend this. As minimall keyed things go it’s a decent endeavor with room creativity and variety that’s a cut above. The minimal keying makes it pretty terse and easier to run than most adventures. Combined, they make this better than the dreck of most adventures. It doesn’t all click together though and your happiness with it probably depends on your views of minimally keying.

It’s worth checking out one of these Unbalanced Dice Games adventures, just to get a toehold on the design behind it.

It’s $4 on DriveThru. The preview is six pages and tells you almost nothing about what is inside. The only “real” adventure page is the background, which is not really representative. Which is too bad. I Wish ONE of the real room pages was present in one of these so people would think I’m not crazy as I struggle to describe the style.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/213348/The-Ruined-Tower-Giant-An-OSR-Adventure?affiliate_id=1892600

By Christopher Audette
Five Cataclysms
Five Cataclysms
“Mid-level”

In a warm place sits a mansion made entirely of many-hued flowers, their vines forming the unnatural architecture of mankind. The house grew around two entities, the Heart of Eternity, and the Heart of Chaos. The Heart of Chaos mutated all life around it, changing it beyond recognition, and the Heart of Eternity gave the new life the order necessary to survive. The Hearts arrived long before mankind existed, and they have been locked in a perpetual struggle ever since. A proxy war is fought between the two, using flowers mutated into ambulatory forms as pawns. The battles are fought entirely inside the house, because while immensely powerful, the influence of the Hearts cannot extend outside. The structure around which the house grew, the Chapel of the Void, is the reason the Hearts cannot leave. Only dreams they create are dreamt beyond the house. Locals in the area know well enough to avoid the house, as all who have entered were either killed or scarred horrendously, but they all receive the dreams. Those who sleep in the area often dream of entering the house, fighting through the rooms, kidnapping one of the Hearts, and sacrificing it on the altar inside the Chapel of the Void. They dream this will bring them great wealth and power. The dreams lie.

This is a 78 page adventure in a weird flower structure with 64 rooms in it. It has about ten pages of introduction, then 22 pages of room descriptions, and then the rest being supplemental information and tables. It ABSOLUTELY has that weird non-standard vibe going on, a hallmark of some of the great OD&D adventures. It’s got a lot of interesting ideas, and a great concept, magic items, creatures, and the rest. GREAT content. It’s also got a vision in presentation and a descriptive style that, while it should work in theory, makes my brain hurt trying to decipher the text. I can let some formatting sins pass in exchange for good content, but, man, this one is hard to justify.

Oh, so a vaguely house-like structure made up of flowers. Inside are two enemies: In one wing is the Heart of Chaos and in another the Heart of Eternity (with rules for shoving one into someone’s chest, Vecna-stylet! Yes!) Their plant-creature minions contest with each other in a third section. They send dreams to people outside the house to get them inside and to kill the other heart. And in the immortal words of a cartoon person “Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here.”

Vines with flower bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Crystals glowing with sunlight with rotting bodies under the soil tended by flower-people. Non-hostile flower people. A deep chasm with 5000 skeletons in it, some wearing obvious treasure, with flower-people keeping you from fucking with it. A room FULL of multi-colored webs crawling with tiny spiders. Six creatures encased in multi-colored amber. Room after room this goes on. Enter a room, be tempted, or face a situation … most all with a kind of theming going on. It’s similar, in that way, to Blue Medusa and other dungeons with strong room visions … perhaps combined with a bit of the fab Dreams of the Lurid Sac. These bizarre and … unearthly? encounters. They force the players to engage or ignore, to tempt fate or use them to their advantage. I don’t think Funhouse is appropriate term for these. ‘OD&D’ seems closer. I don’t know what to call it, but it’s pretty exciting to see.

Likewise, the magic items. There’s a big table of a hundred at the back and the adventure is worth having just for that table alone. A snow globe that when you shake it causes a blizzard to spring up within 50’. A crown of thorns that allows the players to grant 1st level cleric spells. A vial of boiling blood .., that is actually a creature. A monocle that lets you see in to a strange dreamland. An oar that, affixed to a ship/boat, surrounds it with mist and allow you passage to one of the lands of the dead. EFFECTS. It concentrates on EFFECTS. There’s some mechanics attached, usually, but never more than about a sentence or less. But the effects. I’ve overjoyed to see magic items that are mysterious and wondrous!

It is also an OH. MY. GOD. nightmare to dig through the rooms. It’s got a decent idea for formatting. Each notable thing in the room is bolded as the first sentence of a paragraph, with the paragraph adding detail. Thus room 1 has two paragraphs, the first starting with the bolded “Vines with flower bulbs hanging from the ceiling” and the second starting with the bolded “Even soil” The meat of the paragraphs follow the bolded sentence, the details to reveal upon further explanation. Thus the DM can quickly give an overview of the room, using the bolded portions that scan quickly, and then follow up as the party inquires. Why uneven soil? There are drag marks? What type? They look like body marks, and go through the east doorway. I like this format. I DO think it helps you scan quickly. My more-than-a-quibble comes with the specific implementation in this adventure. The bolded portions are a little weak, being facts and lacking strong imagery in them. I’m looking for “bulbous flower bulbs” or “oozing flower bulbs” or something like that. Further, the “mundane” text is not really organized well, which becomes a pain in the ass when the room is non-trivial. Room seven is the Vibrating Lotus Pond. Murky pond water covering the floor. Lotus flower of many colors floating on the pond. Multicolored glittering beneath the pond. The middle paragraph is long. LOOOOONG. There’s beetles in them, and, while not a lot going on, I’d argue, there is a lot of text. It’s good, but I don’t think it’s organized effectively. IDK, bullet points, or some other technique? As with the Fungi Chemist I think the strict devotion to the vision hampers the presentation. I’m in favor of a strong vision, but as we move it out of the realm of the platonic and it hits the road we need to mangle it if it conflicts with higher values … like ‘understanding.’ IN an attempt to be MORE understandable it is less. Pulling out the “beetle combat” for example, to another paragraph, and/or pulling out the treasure (present in the last two paragraphs) to a separate one would have allowed the upper paragraphs to focus on the environment while the combat/treasure focused on the actions.

I would also take exception to the random monsters. Flower people, and maybe angels and demons, could show up. There are tables for each that you can use to randomly determine them. Nice in theory. I would have also liked to have seen a table of pregen ones. Just one sheet full of stats for each of them, perhaps in addition to the random rules. Then I have the option of doing more but I’m not forced to slow down play by rolling. Yes, I could do it myself ahead of time. Or … the fuckign designer could have done it for me to help me out. There’s a few other things, like having to roll saving throws every 20 minutes in two wings of the dungeon. I’ve not sure how I feel about that. I like the “time pressure” aspect but dislike the tedium of the mechanic. Meh. But, on the plus side, it does something Death Frost Doom did, using spells in “appropriate ways.” Protection from Evil, or something similar, will prevent the save from having to be made. How about Bless? Sure, I’d say, if the player makes a good argument. This use of the “utility” nature of spells is something I favor.

I note it also has another Death Frost Doom callback … both skeletons, angels and/or demons could be let loose upon the world, if folks fuck the place up. There’s some cosmic shit going on inside with things in balance for a LONG time. Fucking with it will mean consequences.

If you are a fan of OD&D weirdness, Lamentations, Lurid Sac, or want some new magic items then this thing is for you. I think it’s non-trivial to run at the table, mostly because of the organization of the detail in the paragraphs. It that were addressed, or the bolded portions were much more evocative, then I may be able to look past my misgivings. Fantastic content, but hard to make my A-Team list.

This is PWYW on DriveThru. The preview is broken.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/212613/House-of-Flowers?affiliate_id=1892600