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Another double shot this Monday morning. We’re trying to figure out how to make this work.

Review 1 – Bryce Lynch

By Stephen Grodzicki
$1 Adventure Frameworks
Low Fantasy Gaming
Mid/high Levels (8?)3d6 7hd cyclops, 5hd boss

This is a ten-ish page adventure with a short overland and one level dwarf hold with about fifteen rooms. It touts itself as a framework to run a sandbox, and is a freebie from a Patreon site. The adventure tries hard and does several things very well, just missing the mark in several areas. With a little more focus this could be that rarest of things: a series that is good.

Woodcutters are seeing small woodland creature skeletons walking about in a cursed wood and want you to check it out. There’s a short overland adventure with a great wandering table that gets you to a small abandoned fortress on a cliff. Inside you find some cyclops and a crazed wight.

This is a good place to talk about the wanderers, both in the dungeon and the wilderness. Everyone is DOING something, and I can’t tell you how happy I am to see this. It’s not just a garbage encounter table copied from a book, but just a little more is added. Just about one sentence more. Just one, and it adds so much. Skeletons “looking for humans to kill and return to their master for animating.” Or cyclops “returning from a raid carrying sheep and children in heavy nets, for eating.” Giants rates “biting a chunk out of a person and then fleeing in to the undergrowth.” These are great. They ARE little frameworks that can be built upon, exactly what a good published wanderer encounter should be. It turns “skeletons” in to something much more, likewise rats and cyclops. THAT’S show you write an encounter. They are dynamic, doing something. It’s not loaded up with text. There’s not much useless detail. It’s focused. It knows what it’s doing. It’s stabbing the DM with an icepick of an idea in the brain where it can flower. As soon as I read the cyclops entry I’m thinking “the cyclops are singing and joking, happy, while the sheep bleet and kids cry and scream and the cyclops smack them.” That’s what you want, JUST enough from the designer to get your brain kicked in to gear and expanding it. Evocative and terse. More IS less, it hides the evocative and forces the DM to dig for the encounter.

The dungeon, proper, is at its best when its following this formula and at its worst when it is padding things out and dwelling on trivia. “This hallway is 20 ft wide and 30 ft long. Corridors branch off to the east and west. A 10 ft wide corridor runs about 100 ft east … “ and so on. This is garbage detail. It’s trivia, duplicating what’s shown on the map and does nothing but clog things up. Likewise a room telling us that a small dias “is where dwarven guards once stood guard.” Well, are the fucking dwarves standing guard there now? No? It’s a cyclops common room? Then why the fuck are you telling me about what USED to be in this room? Look, it’s great if, as the designer, you’ve built this backstory, but you don’t need to vomit it up to the poor DM. I’m desperately scanning text trying to run the room

But, the adventure has some great things in it. Once room has a pit covered by an iron grate and a winch. Brain Eating ZOmbies are inside, moaning, climbing each other to reach through the bars, thumping their fists and biting the bars. PERFECT! You know what it adds? “Releasing the zombies could be an extraordinary bad idea for any nearby humans (or cyclops.)” GREAT! It’s a thing, it’s interactive, it’s evocative. That’s kind of fucking shit you want in your dungeon. I don’t need to know the wight uses this chamber as a holding pen. It’s obvious. I don’t need the fucking room dimensions. The entire five paragraph description should be shortened to three (one being monster stats) and it would be a lean, mean Dungeons and fucking Dragons Machine!

But, for every one of those there’s something that doesn’t quite work as well. The cyclops common room has one abused & bitter one that could be a turncoat …but that’s not really likely in a big cyclops common room, is it? The thing isn’t designed for that detail to be useful. Likewise there are two encounters outside, near the entrance to the keep, on a bridge or in a stream/ravine that feel forced. “Griffins attack when you cross the bridge” and a river monster attacks when you cross the stream. These feel less natural than either the wanderers or the creatures in the keep. More of a “now is the time when you fight a monster” than a “there is a monster living here.” There’s also a section where there’s some ancient writing. It you don’t make you check to decode it/speak the language, then you still get the gist of the message. That’s fucking bullshit. Why fucking bother rolling then? Likewise the mundane treasure is boring abstraction like “trinkets”, while the magic treasure is boring potions or full of bullshit mechanics. Fuck the “advantage in all checks to resist fatigue and may invoke a Thunderweave effect once every 1d4 days.” boring Boring BORING. “The bearer never tires in combat and, once charged with static electricity (every 1d4 days) releases (whatever the thunderweave effect is.) Magic should be wonderful, not reduced to mechanics. I touch roses.

The map has nice details on it, even if it is a bit cramped. The challenge level is all over the place, with a room full of 7HD cyclops and a boss monster that’s 5 HD, zombies, skeletons, and a 10HD river monster … I’m just guessing at level 8.

It’s a decent effort and I think the designer is close. More focus, more evocative, more creativity (no, not every fucking room needs to be a set piece) and this could be a really nice series.

This is currently free, as an example of the designers work on their Patreon page. Check out those wanderer description on page three, or the zombie room (5) on page seven. Or, the absurd amount of text for room one on page five.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1xtqfss1mfuc5r4/%2818%29%20Halls%20of%20the%20Dwarf%20Lord%20%28Parchment%29.pdf?dl=0

Review A – The Pretty Girl

Halls of the Dwarf Lord
By Stephen Grodzicki
$1 Adventure Frameworks
Low Fantasy Gaming
Mid/high Levels (8?)3d6 7hd cyclops, 5hd boss
Total Score: 15 (out of 22)

A bread and butter campaign written in the style of a late 2.0 Forgotten Realms Module.. I hope all those references and proper nouns show up in other modules.. otherwise it’s a bit silly to behave as if ~made up person~ has significance either within the module itself or outside. If I am expected to care that the famed hammer likes to be called Sally.. I better get the chance to meet her.

Optimal Applications

What do the numbers mean?

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

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

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

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