tenfootpole.org

By Stephen Smith
Mister Smith Design
BECMI
Levels 1-3

A peaceful village of fisher folk and artisans. A friendly community safely perched high above the raging sea. On the surface life is grand, but who knows what trouble lies below?

This 54 page supplement details a small seaside village and an even small cave/dungeon, using eight pages to describe about fifteen rooms in it. There’s an ability here, to describe a decent scene, but it’s squandered on a weird disconnect between the vibe of the room and the DM notes for the room. I’m not mad at this, just a little puzzled at what it’s trying to do.

Nice production values on this, with clear easy to read maps of the dungeon and a layout style that is not overly busy but does a decent job of focusing the attention. This is combined with some art that I don’t hate and in some cases kind of love, but I can recognize that some effort was spent on it and making it try to fit in to the vibe. And I say all of this and lead off the review with it because I was fully expecting a load of garbage. Those things, plus the obligatory background story/boring page, plus all of the title page crap didn’t get me in a place where I was expecting something good. And then the hooks started in, with the usual variations of “you are hired to …” … I was pretty much dreading what was coming. And then I got to the missing child hook. Where mayor dickcheese offers to replenish your food supplies if you find the missing kid they think went in to the old sea cave below. And that hook ends with “ (SPOILER ALERT: Little Timmie was hiding in the tool shed the whole time).” Woah … ok. The kids name is Timmy and he’s in the shed while the party is getting gutted? That’s my kind of twist! Things are looking up!

The next set of pages is devoted to the small village, its places and people. This goes on WAY too long. But, also, it’s going on too long in a weird way. So, the map of the village is keyed, which doesn’t help much, you have to refer back to the text to find out where something is on the map. And the various buildings/businesses don’t really get much of a description at all. Just a sentence or two. Props for not droning on, but those descriptions are VERY generic and don’t really say anything at all interesting about the place. So, then, what’s the point of the description? Let’s take this one “1. Fishmonger — fresh, smoked, dried, and salted fish, scallops, shellfish.” Did that add anything to the description of “Fishmonger?” And while it’s a single sentence, a few others go on for two or three or one long one. But they don’t really add any value to anything. Except, then, you run across “Naturopath — Ocean based dietary aids for allergies, headaches, fatigue, chronic pain, sleep and digestive disorders.” Well … ok. I’m noticing a trend here, of the designer slipping in, slyly, some pretty good shit. But, also, there’s a tackle shop, with a description? What’s the purpose of that?

And then there’s quite the long section of the people in the town. Again, this is mostly bullshitty useless padding, telling ups in a sentence or three why this person is the typical generic fantasy villager. And then we get to “Ongoing lunch feud with a pelican.” or “They and their twin always dress exactly alike” or “practices flirting with seagulls.” That fucking shit is great! That’s what I’m buying a D&D supplement for! I don’t give a fuck about generic bustling fantasy tavern. But the barmaid learns her flirting skills by practicing on gulls? GOLD! And the fucking thing takes a turn here. Every NPC in the village has this kind of shit for them. It’s great! It’s just like Pembrocktonshire, except the fucking entries are padded out uselessly and it takes far more space, thanks to that clear formatting/layout, to cram in the same amount of people.

The dungeon is about fifteen rooms, half sea caves and half carved out. The descriptions here range from ok to useless. The first entrance room is ok “On approach of this hollowed fissure, the sound of the crashing waves echo against the sheer rock face. Although once much larger, the passage is now choked with rubble. The gap is low, narrow, and just wide enough for one person to enter at a time. The rocky walls are slick with saltwater and the tangy odor of brine fills the air.” I get what the designer is going for, and it’s an ok job. The “Although once larger” thing is cumbersome, and the entire thing could be edited to get that vibe across a little better. But, also, it’s not terrible at all. Each room has something like that, not exactly read aloud, but more communicating things to the DM. Which is generally fine. Until we get to something like “K) The Morgue Several stone slabs serve as a temporary holding space for the recently deceased. Presently empty” Supposed to fire my imagination? Indeed DEVO, he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me. 

What follows, after this little not-read-aloud text, is something called “DM Insights”, for each room. This would be your DM text. For that Mortuary room it says “Shadows. (see Bestiary on pg 41) Treasure: Potion of Diminution” And this is the major disconnect I’m having. I don’t understand this. That room, in particular, is essentially as minimally keyed as Vampire Queen. The others do have a bit more description to them, but the DM Insights are almost always this kind of minimal keying. It’s more than a little rattling to come across, and I’m not sure why. It feels disconnected from each other. As if the room proper and the monster/loot somehow are not integrated at all. There are hints, here and there, of things. One room, wet, has a milky substance spread out in it … and it turns out there are giant spiders in the DM Insights section. So, sure, I guess that ties the two together? I kind of get what the designer is going for … a strong enough initial section and then a DM section that just clarifies things. I don’t think, though, that the initial sections are really strong enough on their own. 

I might say that I can draw parallels to the dungeon as a whole and the town also. The sea saves turn in to a mortuary complex, turn in to a temple for Deep Ones. It’s a kind of linear map (but with monster names on it for reaction purposes. Yeah) But the entire thing feels pretty disconnected from each other. Not like you are in zones but rather “and then heres the mortuary complex!” for some reason. And, then, the inclusion of the town, or, rather, the amount of length spent on the town description. That’s a lot of text to support a small fifteen room dungeon (with some 5HD bosses in it …) It just feels like things are disconnected to each other and that they don’t vibe well … it’s not as blatant as a funhouse dungeon, but it sticks out. 

This would have been MUCH better concentrating on the unique parts and minimizing the “typical fantasy” parts. A better integration both in the dungeon format, the dungeon proper, and the dungeons relation to the town. There is clearly a sly wink attitude here, which is wonderful, and the ability to turn a phrase to describe something. But the rest of it falls down. It’s not terrible, but I’m not sure why I would select this to play.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is eighteen pages with a great selection of town, dungeon, and bestiary. Great preview!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/479070/a-problem-in-port-haven?1892600

Seba G.M.
Dados Tostados
Knave2
"Low Levels"

Apollo and his son, two masters together, Wouldn’t know how to mend me; their craft has failed me, Goodbye, pleasant Sun! My eyes are stuffed, My body descends where everything is disassembled. ~Sonnet posthumes, Pierre de Ronsard~

This forty page booklet about skeletons uses twenty pages to present an adventure with three scenes that takes about four pages to describe, generously. There’s nothing here.

This is a supplement that deals with skeletons. New spells about skeletons. Some new skeleton variants. A dude that really likes skeletons. And a skeleton based adventure. Or, rather, “adventure.” Someone has been digging up graveyards in the region. Duke Lotto sends you over to the this town of ropemakers to guard their graveyard. Scene one is arriving at town, fucking around with the townfolk, etc. Scene two is a group of skeletons digging up the graveyard that night. Scene three is the party fighting a wight, back at the skeletons home base, which the party needs to track the skeletons back to. 

That’s your adventure. Three scenes. All of which are completely straightforward. And describes, I must say, in few words. I’m gonna give you the scene two descriptions. Skeletons come marching out of the forest in to the graveyard. They have tools to dig it up. One skeleton seems to be in charge. I am NOT fucking around when I say that the detail, beyond that, is not really present. That’s your fucking scene. Fight them. Follow them back, it’s up to you. 

The whole execution of the adventure is not really an adventure, at least not by my taxonomy. “Hey man, I had this idea last night that some skeletons could dig up a graveyard!” That’s all this is, some VERY general ideas of what could happen. And by “what could happen” I mean “go to town, dig up a graveyard, fight a wight in charge.” Because there’s nothing more to be done other than that. 

There’s a map! Of the village! It doesn’t make sense! There are, if I recall correctly, eight locations on the map. The legend says things like “the bridge (over the river)” or “the hunters lodge” or “the westward road” or “the hemp farm”. (No doubt the villagers talk incessantly about how Lord Jefferon grew hemp …) None of the locations are described, so, it’s not that kind of map. I guess you could ad lib some shit about people working in the hemp fields, or something like that. I’m not morally opposed to this. I’m also not especially thrilled for an adventure to take this approach when there is absolutely no content at all for the main part of the adventure. It feels like some amount of effort could be spent on the rest of the fucking adventure instead of this watercolor-like map of a village with locations. Similarly, the valley that the weight lives in has a map, but it no keys on it. And some textual mentions of a kind of underground abandoned city that the wight lives in. No other detail/maps/etc described. I think, perhaps, even worse though, is how the map actually seems to conflict with the text in a few places. The graveyard is on the western side of a river. The village hugs the eastern shore. The skeletons march out of the eastern wood. So … they march through town? Or, do I have my directions mixed up? There is no compass on the map, so, … maybe the skeletons march out of the woods right next to the graveyard? Also, the weights lair isn’t on the village map, not even with an arrow or something. It’s like all of this shit is just an afterthought. 

I don’t know what else to say here. There’s no real text imagery to speak of. It does use skill checks. Tracking the skeletons back through the forest “deals d4 damage unless the characters pass a Constitution Check (TN 16.” I hate that shit. First, haven’t there been abot fifty bajillion articles on this kind of shit and why its bad, thanks to disaster that was third edition skills? You know, every one in the party has a +50 to spot hidden, and shit like that, which leads to an arms race in checks vs ability, and the min/maxxing that a decent portion of the population these days  thinks D&D is? Hmm, that was a long sentence. I must really dislike that. Not to mention perhaps an even more egregious sin: the abstraction of fun. Why have the skill check instead of just having a scene that the party can work to overcome? Why just abstract away the fun to a die roll? If you’re ok with this then why not just have each party member roll a d6 at the start of the game session. 1-3 you live and 4-6 you died on the adventure. Then at least you could all go drinking or something. It’s the same fucking thing. The game is what happens before those die rolls, the journey through the forest, the obstacles overcome, the wacky plans, etc. That IS the game of D&D.

This bullshit abstraction makes me feel cheated, Mr Lydon.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. All title pages and shit like that, with one page of backstory for the wight. Shitty preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/492386/graveyard-dirt?1892600

By Vanessa Nairn
Snail Song Studios
OSE
"Low Levels"

Jebediah Bigby is a meadmaker extraordinaire, famous throughout the region for his delicious mead. The secret to his success is simple, ‘Big Bees make better honey.’ However, rumours run wild as to the true secret of Bigby’s success. Now that shipments have started going missing, it’s your job to delve into the meadery and find out!

This 34 page adventure presents an underground brewery with bees and goblins with a small above ground section. A rather A rather standard fare that doesn’t overstay, with the usual issues. Where ‘standard fare’ has the usual low-interest meaning. 

So, there’s nothing special about this adventure. It’s the usual go in a room and stan things kind of affair. This comes along with poor text/descriptions, etc saving grace being the text doesn’t drone on and on. But, also, I had this idea …

What’s going on here is the halfling Bigby (no relation) runs a meadery. Another halfling meader rival, Penelope Smallby, hires a hobgoblin and his goblin band to raid it and get the secret recipe. It’s not Love. Turns out ol Bigby has been running his mead through a fishtank with slopfish in it, which infuses an unnatural happiness in his mead. And in stronger doses it makes you not be able to feel ANYTHING ut joy, even during the greatest tragedies. Also, Penelope doesn’t want to pay the goblins. Also, Bigby is cheery and morbidly obese. There’s an entry on the (aboveground) wandering monster table that has a group of halfing nature enthusiasts about and about enjoying watching the bees. The giant bees. …  I hope you’re thinking what I’m thinking! There was an opportunity here, that I initially thought the adventure was going to go down, for a REALLY good adventure. Murder, betrayal, suicides in town. Extortion. Bribes. Cover-ups! All of the seediness of a small town coming out and being amplified. You can imagine Poirot at the end emphasizing “And all for a mead recipe!” The cheeriness of the halflings. The absurdity of the situation, juxtaposed with the awfulness of the consequences of the actions taken. That’s an awesome fucking adventure!

But this one is just your normal fare. Walk in to rooms in an underground area. Meet a goblin. Or rat. Or bee. Maybe talk to a goblin. Stab everything else, probably. The height of interactivity is finding a key behind a painting (nice!) or following some pipes behind a wall. Again, nice. But these are very isolated examples. The vast majority of it is just walking to a room with very little for the DM to work with. You know the deal, just one thing in the room. And the thing is simple. And it usually doesn’t have implications for things further/deeper in to the dungeon. There’s no build up or mystery.

This isn’t helped much by the words. What we get, time after time, is some text that looks like read-aloud but is really a kind of narrator’s commentary in a movie or tv show. “Normally, the ground floor of Bigby’s Meadery is well kept and serves as a bar and storefront. However, ever since Glurgak’s band took over, it looks like a hurricane has hit it, with broken bottles and furniture scattered about” I can imagine the narrator in those old Discworld Tv Movies. Or “A decorative garden that offers one of the sources of pollen for Bigby’s Giant Bees.” That’s more of a name, rather than a description? The text should inspire the DM to greatness, to plant a solid idea in their head that they can then riff off of, making it more than the sum of the its words. 

This isn’t an offensive dungeon. It’s hard to imagine something this simplistic to be offensive. I’m not even sure its a dull dungeon. It’s more of a … staid dungeon and/or adventure? I wish it were more. I wish the giant bee/honey/mead thing was more prevalent in more rooms, and really lent a vibe of being immersed in it. But the descriptions just aren’t evocative enough for that.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages. That gives you the background info that I though would be great as a tragedy, but it needed to also show some rooms so we can get a sense of what the core of the adventure looks like.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/491923/trouble-at-bigby-s-meadery?1892600

By Gabriel Ramos
Wonder Twin Harmony
OSE
Levels 1-3

On the lonely Windswept Island a death cult’s dungeon hides the path to an extraplanar vault with a macabre ritual. Within that dreadful vault rests a powerful sword imbued with the soul of the death deity’s most fervent fanatic.

This forty page adventure uses twelve pages to describe seven rooms in a puzzle dungeon. Intricate rooms with some decent imagery, but it all feels like a video game, with confusing descriptions.

Member when, back when there were these video games that were co-op, in a certain way? Maybe split-screen couch co-op, and they were advertised that you could play them with your girlfriend, cause girls don’t like to play videogames. And you’d run along in your own little separate splitscreens and do things in one area to help the person in the other are get past some obstacle? Portal was kind of the same thing, except it was just you. This adventure is that.

You walk in the front door of the dungeon and the doors slam shut behind you (sigh) and the giant statue says something like “go get the magic sword and present it to me and I’ll let you out.” (sigh) Anyway, you’re supposed to figure out that a party member needs to kill themself. Then you can use the green orb in the room to turn them in to a ghost. They then have a limited amount of time to walk through a wall and pull levers and so on. In some other room (that you don’t see till later, remember you’re trapped) there’s a fresco that implies you can bring them back to life again. So, stuck in a room forever with some vague riddle telling you to kill yourself. Until you do so. And use the green orb right. 

From there things get a bit confusing … I swear I have gone through this multiple times and, just like that fucking dam thing in Zork 2, I cannot figure out what the fuck I am supposed to do. I THINK the ghost goes west to pull a lever, which unlocks the room with hints in it, and then you go east to get a key and then put the key in the lock in the hint room and then get the sword. I THINK. I note that this is all outlined in a summary section and individual parts are noted in the room descriptions, but I STILL can’t really figure out if that’s the correct reading. The whole ghost/no-ghost thing is also a mess. Oh, and, also, remember, fuck around too much and your ghost buddy dies for realsies. 

That problem, the one of confusion for the DM, is a trend in this adventure. At one point there’s a text description that has some references to cones and spheres, I think, and then says something like there’s a malnourished cube down in a pit. What the fuck is a malnourished cube? I read and reread and then skipped it … only to find, at the end of the room entry on a different page, that it’s a malnourished GELATINOUS cube.  Ohhhhhh! That makes sense! And now the algae line on the wall makes sense also! So much more now makes sense! And these are not isolated examples, in a seven room dungeon. The text, the DM text, is cumbersome. It’s using some formatting where room exits are very important and high up, so shit about the room that might be important is further down, sometimes on another page, and it’s not always obvious that the text continues. So you look at it thinking “huh. What am I missing?” At one point there’s a note that the green orb can tell “A creature is given the time of its lingering life force potential were it to die.” After puzzling that out for a great long while I think I decided that it tells a ghost how long until it does for realsies. I think.

And the individual rooms tend to be set-piecy. It feels for all the world like you’re in some Portal stage that you need to clear to move on to the next one. That’s not the vibe I’m going for in D&D. But, hey, I recognize that could be your vibe. For some reason … If you like rearranging blocks on the floor to spell a death gods name while skeletons come out each round to fight you until you’re done. It’s just TOO blatantly a puzzle. Like you just handed someone a crossword puzzle and told them to solve it to cross the river Styx. 

There’s some good stuff in here also. There’s a decent overview, in most rooms, which could be read-aloud, which generally gives a very strong impression of the room. Cherry picking room five “Chained skulls hanging from the ceiling emit a pale blue light, illuminating a long hallway of constantly rippling sand. An obsidian altar stands before a barred archway.” Not the best, from a “where is what? “ standpoint, but still a cool room description that cements it and really makes you feel like you are somewhere. Although, it is leaning towards “stick a cool adjective in” syndrome. Yet I will the admit the line is fine between sticking in a cool adjective and good writing. 

I’ve got a lot of nits around treasure, with skeletons with diamonds for teethe not getting any worth. But, also, the hook treasure map only is readable on moonless nights. Groovy! And a severed hand in a box wears a ring. A cursed ring! I like it! And in other places we’ve got heads of kings with their golden crows nailed to their heads. Ouchies! Or their wrists bound with rusty barbed chains. But, then again, the entire “explore the island” section is really perfunctory and kind of a museum tour.

If I excuse the set piece nature, then more focus on the text could have solved the confusion issues. (Where was that editor?) And there is clearly a bit of talent for conjuring up a memorable scene and at least describing it initially. Yeah, needs more focus, both on the wilderness sections especially and in the dungeon in general. And the concept it kind of lame. But, given a non-lame concept I would be interested in seeing something … say, a full on dungeon/adventure? 

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see the ritual overview I had trouble with, and some of the island … for which there is no map. Not a great preview, since there are no rooms, but not a terrible one either.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/489237/secret-vault-of-the-windswept-island?1892600

By G.A. Mitchell
Self Published
OSR
Level 1

A barrow has sat on a hillside for centuries, unnoticed by all save a few grazing cattle. But in recent years the barrow has grown a reputation for darkness. Suspicious tales are whispered about a malevolent creeping spirit that steals from the barrow at night to eat livestock and carry off the unwary. Yet that is not all. Strange men came through town of late, all heading in the direction of the barrow. Who knows what cruel and evil god these new arrivals worship, or what fell machinations they plot from within the old barrow’s halls.

This eleven page adventure presents an eleven room barrow. It’s a weird mix of classic fantasy, almost from folklore, and standard dull fantasy. It’s trying, but the designer hasn’t quite mastered the skill of writing a room description, both from the read-aloud or DM text.

I love me a barrow adventure! Ancient hills with crumbling standing stones on top and weathered lintels leading to narrow tunnels. Sign me up! And this adventure uses both the word verisimilitude AND effluvium?! Someone is going for that old school D&D vibe! And that comes through, well, in places. There’s this nice little encounter inside, in a natural chamber with a pool in it. And a harpy, luring the party in to drown. Yeah, the rooms al little small and Ms Harpy aint gonna succeed well, I suspect, against a full party, but it really does a good job, in its presentation, of converting this kind of classic fantasy vibe, free of all of the RPG bullshit. Likewise, we have a giant spider, who talks, and her daughters, in one room. And she’s got this cultist trapped in her webs, who’s kind of an idiot, who they are keeping alive because he’s a fool. At least temporarily. Yeah, yeah, I like talking animals. But, also, the VIBE from The Hobbit is a really good one. Maybe a little too clean, but that’s the way I rumble. And the talking spiders really communicate that vibe. You can like different things, I don’t care, but I think this kind of thing really communicates situations in which the party can be free thinkers, and rewarded for it, instead of just rolling a fucking number from their character sheets. And that’s the atmosphere I want in my game. 

I want to point out, also, a description of a bubbling cauldron which appears in one of the final rooms: “A hissing pool, thick with creamy brown slime bubbles with slithering movement. Worm-things spasm and groan beneath the fat-skin on the surface of the font which faintly glows, casting lurid whispering shadows about the vaulted hall.” I can get down with almost all of that. The hissing pool. Thick creamy brown. Slithering. A fat skin. The whole casting lurid whispers thing goes a bit over the top for me, but the rest of it is pretty decent. 

But, alas, the rest of this is the usual that we find in adventures. The baddies are cultists of the worm god, although, that whole worm god motif doesn’t really come through much at all. Just a veneer, really, with little vivadry. And the read-aloud is italics, which is hard on the eyes for long sections of it. And the DM’s text contains a lot of room history that is irrelevent to the play at the table. The entrance tells us “This is the doorway into the barrow. It was smashed open with prybars and picks and hauled open by Kizvin and his cult followers two weeks ago.” Yup, the entrance is usually the entrance. And the backstory here is the third, or fourth, time we’ve been told it in the adventure. It all comes off as a rather staid location rather than a dynamic one, full of mystery. 

And then there’s the timer. The adventure tells us its a timer. It’s actually more a timeline. Days one through seven, with different things happening each day, like the spiders eating the dude and then on the final day the worm god being summoned forth. But, this has a problem. While timelines are great, they move things and make the world seem alive, timers are different. Timelines usually give a hint that a timER exists. You learn that you need to deal with the situation or something bad might happen. The timer here, if we can call it that rather than a timeline, doesn’t really give any hint at all that The End is coming, and thus there is no way for the party to know. Any tension that was possible is not present. Further, certain aspects of the timeline actively work against the fun of the adventure, like the spiders killing the dude they’ve captured. Realistic? Sure. But the point is fun. And if killing him (the spiders killing him) detracts from the fun then why do it? He’s not a resource for the players. They don’t know the spider will kill him. There’s no race against time, at least not one that the party knows about. I make wanderer checks in the open, and openly advance the wanderer time wheel (Goblinoid Games, if memory serves?) It’s the tension. You have to know you are making a decision in order to feel the tension from that decision. 

There are elements here that show promise. Some interesting encounters and a decent description or two. But, also, a lack of focus on the keys and it slips in to a kind of staid cultist/tomb vibe. 

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/491280/the-barrow-of-bhalagrim-jem1?1892600

That’s the fucking way you explore a fucking barrow!

By Simone Zambruno
Classic Dungeon Adventures
OSE? No.
Levels 0-1

The History of Neraka Valley is a tetralogy of adventures revolving around a singular narrative. Each one weaves a fragment of the epic of an ancient temple nestled in a small, secluded mountain valley, from the present times to the days of yore.

This 25 page adventure uses about eight pages to describe thirteen rooms in a dungeon. Ponderous text and low interactivity. You know the drill by now, and are bored of it.

I see this web thing about a new place in town that advertises the best hamburger in Indiana. I drive there. There’s a giant sign that says “Best Burger in Indiana”  It’s in a great building and the decor is wonderful. The staff are great. Drinks (vodka gimlet, of course) are dirt cheap with a generous pour. I order the burger, medium, for $12.95. About a minute later they bring out a McDonalds hamburger, still in the wrapper. It’s cold. “Yeah, we been working on the decor and bar; didn’t have time to work on the burger.” 

This adventure has a musical soundtrack to go along with it. For each room there’s a note on which track to play for the party. It’s also got this super fun presentation where the pages are all black and a white font is used. A fancy one at that. And, of course, all of those background pages and notes for the DM and appendices and pregens and such. Those make up at least, what, two thirds of the text here? I suppose folks are excited about things other than the main text. Or, if they are me, they are sick of looking at the main text. But the main text IS the most important part of the adventure. The main thing is the main thing. That’s what the vast majority of your time should bespent on, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Yeah, I’d like an easy to use format. But the fucking formatting isn’t the adventure. The text of the room keys. The interactivity of the encounters. I can, and will, sometimes tell people to go get a highlighter for this one, because it’s worth it. But I’m never going to say “oh boy! This is a super shitty/average adventure and the room keys suck, but look at that colour scheme used! Totally get it for that!” Dazzle in the page ong backstory of the dungeon that tells us there is an earthquake and worms tunneling collapsing things. Multiple times. This is not the main thing. You need to focus on the main thing.

There is read-aloud. It describes things in second person. This is never a good thing. “You descend the stone steps.” The read-aloud over-reveals. It destroys the back and forth between DM and player. The text, read-aloud and DM text is full of overwrought prose. “The luminous switch, if touched by a soul of benign alignment …” or “… survived  the ravages of time. Mayhaps they were crafted from special materials or magically treated.”  You can also see an example of if/then writing in that. Background data: “This room, erstwhile intended as a waiting room or a modest study, now lies in disarray.” No shit it’s a fucking room. Thats what the fucking key says. And we don’t care what it was, I care about whats going on now. “Along the right wall you may discern a sizeable circular aperture.” “They appear frightfully ravenous.” This is not how one writes. We write to convey a vibe to the DM, who can convey it to the players and riff off of it. We don’t use this kind of overwrought text.

Interactivity is stabbing things. There’s a room where you can fall in a pit “Escaping is easy if you have a rope.” But, but, what if I have a ladder instead? Is it still easy? Anything else to be pedantic about? Anyway, stabbing, a pit trap, a room that heals you. 

It’s a generic/universal adventure in spite of it being labeled as OSE.

This is $1.00 at DriveThru. There’s no fucking preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/491366/the-lost-temple?1892600

By Zonk
Self Published
OSR/Into the Odd
Level ?

Three Rat Chiefs rule over a tribe of rat-like humanoids, harnessing the power of chili for their own depraved and corrupt ends. Treasure awaits the intrepid explorer, or a death choking on capsaicin, clobbered by a rat wrestler, or incinerated by a lich.

This 56 page adventure (not 52 as the cover suggests) uses 21 pages to describe eighteen rooms in some caves full of rat men. It’s got a hint of good descriptions, in places, but is an overly verbose tangle that has little more than stabbing things in it.

Just is a site based location, with no hooks. Well, there are hooks, just a “if you need one then maybe they stole a cow” kind of thing. But, otherwise, there’s none of that overblown hook shit found in other adventures … even though there’s a section called hooks. And I’m A-Ok with this. Sites don’t really need hooks. There’s a hole in the ground. Get going. I would not, however, that the hook section is two paragraphs long. Even though there’s essentially nothing there other than “maybe they stole a cow.” This, my ignoble readers, is what we call a sign of things to come.

Let’s look at the description for room one: “If the PCs manage to make their way down the mine shaft, they’re met with a grim visage:” The sentence continues with “the mangled, ancient remains of two apparent miners, a broken pick next to one, a strange helmet next to the other.” Let’s be clear: I hate absolutely the fuck everything about this description. Both clauses of it. In fact, I don’t think I could write a more textbook description, if I were going to give examples of what makes a description bad. IF the PC’s manage to … Great start, with an IF clause. And, of course, they really MUST make their way down the mine shaft in order to enter the dungeon (at least, this entrance.) That’s all just an if/then pad. And then there’s that grim visage shit. It’s not aimed at the party, so it must be aimed at the DM. But it’s overly … meta? For the DM. If it’s read aloud then we describe a scene in which the players think “man, that’s a grim visage!” If it’s for the DM then we cement that imagery in their head in a way that facilitates them communicating it to the players so that they think “man, that’s a grim visage!” But in no circumstances do we do this meta thing. So, the first two lines of the five line description ( in the layout) are meaningless. The rest of the description is, well, boring. If it were read-aloud (And its clear, I think, its not meant to be) then it would over-reveal. But it’s just boring. And it has that word apparent in it? I LOATHE the use of appears to be. Seems to be. It does nothing for the text at all. I want a description that really brings the scene to life, and that’s not it. 

And that happens over and over and over again in the adventure. The descriptions are both padded out with this meta shit and then the ACTUAL description ends up being more than a little boring. There’s no sense of rat man tunnels, or caves, at all. And while there is a chili garden, and they boil chilis in one room, the whole chili theme isn’t really present at all either. It just a fucking boring ass cave with a chili garden and a cauldron in one room. 

There are, though, some high points. They are exits from the rooms. I hate room exits, in a description. I LOATHE them. For that first room they take up about half the page while teh actual fucking description and shit, for the room and things, takes up, I don’t know, a quarter of the page? Perfect, the fucking exits get more description than the room does. But, also … it’s using the OSE style. Which, I know, gets some people worked up., But it’s used here perfectly. (crudly dug, a smell of ammonia and wet fur) That’s EXACTLY what you want to communicate to the party. That’s exactly the sort of thing I want in a room, in fact. That’s the vibe. Or, (spicy armor, cow tracks, crudely dug) or (rotten stench.) The first one, crudely dug dirt tunnel with that stench of ammonia and wet fur … that’s REALLY good. It makes you imagine and feel something. And that’s what every description should do. Monster, treasure, room. “This potato-shaped chamber is blessed with a natural crack in the roof, leading outside;” Blessed with a natural crack in the roof. Fuck that shit.

The actual encounters in the caves are pretty boring. It’s mostly fighting rats. A lich rat. The rat chief. The farmer rat. The alchemist rat. The potion rat. You bored yet? I am. There’s a library in one room. No book value listed as treasure (maybe that’s an into the odd thing?) But there’s a whole lot of No Treasure. And not a whole lot of things to do here other than just go in to a room and stab someone. There are some throw away lines about talking to the rats. “Bob likes books.” but I don’t see how that comes up when he is threatening to stab you. 

The idea here is not realized. The interactivity is poor. The descriptions show a lack of understanding of the descriptive purpose. Meh.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $1. The preview is a worthless six pages, but you do get it for free, I guess, since it’s PWYW.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/491351/the-chili-rat-chiefs?1892600

By M.Bongers
Stone Gear Studios
OSR
Level ?

To kill a Unicorn is a tragedy. To murder one and construct a weapon from it’s remains is a sin against the world. 

This eight page adventure presents a single NPC. I guess I should have known better.

Someone I know was getting her oil changed. They told her that she needed to get her air filter and cabin filter changed once a year. $80. She doesn’t know. Every oil change place is a rip off. Every chain auto place is a rip off. You get your oil changed and NOTHING more and hope that they actually do it and don’t fuck it up while ripping you off. The dealer is the same but they are better at lying and charge 5 times more.

Don’t you wish you could trust someone? If you buy something you could feel like you didn’t need to worry about getting screwed over? Puffery abounds. More than puffery? Adventure levels one through five! Yeah, but it was written for fives and the one experience is totally different, not expanded upon by the designer, and left as an exercise for the reader. Sandboxes that defy the expectations of a sandbox. And not in a good way. It doesn’t matter what the product description says. Do you research, endlessly, for a $2 product? Why not just buy it? You can afford it, right? Damn the cynicism that builds up from the continual line of garbage that flows obfuscates, beyond the category of outright lies. Is it an apple? What, Socrates, is an apple? The form? The function? “It is art if you say it is art.” … and an analogy to D&D adventures? At what point does incompetence become outright fraud? The marketing blurb on DriveThru? Ha! 

Frank the NPC kills this unicorn and makes a spear out of its horn. He then goes around killing animals, I guess. You stumble upon his campsite outside of a city. He’s got a couple of followers “if the DM wants to make the combat harder.” That’s your adventure. Nothing more. Just you fight this dude at his campsite, which is not detailed. Does he have a personality? Yeah. Paranoid. So he picks a fight with the party if they are nice to him instead of immediately stabbing him. Cause fighting gotta happen, I guess. It’s a long NPC description and then a note that you can fight him at his campsite. Enjoy this adventure. Or NPC. Or whatever it is. 

But, hey, not to worry. There are fifteen downloads for this eight page adventure, so you can have those eight pages arrayed any way you might imagine, as well as solo artwork pieces. Wonderful effort there.

This is $1.50 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Which means I can’t tell if it’s an NPC or an adventure. “But the description says there is an NPC!” And what does the description not say? And I’m supposed to start believing what the marketing says now? Everything is hopeless. Except … the existence of a good preview, which shows you everything you need to know before you buy. Which this doesn’t have.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/490601/a-spear-brings-sorrow?1892600