The Lair of Drecallis

Posted on August 1, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

lld
By Rich Maffei
Expeditious Retreat Press
OSRIC
Levels 4-7

For a second year in a row, Drecallis has not appeared on the appointed day to collect her tribute from the people of Longridge. Is the terrible beast dead? Or has the great reptile departed for greener pastures? The elders are desperate to discover the truth, and if the dragon is indeed dead, a priceless hoard may be sitting in the dragon’s lair, unguarded. A call has been put out for brave souls willing to seek out the remote lair of Drecallis and investigate!

This is a thirty-ish room cave complex with a good variety of creatures crawling about. It has a vanilla slant to it, although a decent variety of vanilla with several touches of classic D&D. The text is long on words and short on interesting.

You might think of the complex map as a kind of star shape. Each of the legs has an entrance in it, with a common convergence areas/no-man’s land in the middle. Trogs in one arm, gnolls in another, vermin-ish stuff is another, and a behir in the last leg (the old dragon lair proper.) There’s conflict here between the three main groups, but not full on faction play. Everyone is hostile in spite of their problems, with on the behir willing to talk, at a low probability and only under certain circumstances. This is an opportunity lost for faction play, although the generally linear nature of the “legs” of the map make interesting faction play/exploration hard to pull off on a map like this.

It’s hard for me to find the words to describe the dungeon. I want to say “boring”, but I think instead the writing is quite flat. A spider in a hole, trogs torturing a gnoll, a crayfish attack … there’s a lof of classic and, in an academic sense, interesting potential to the encounters. But the writing style here just puts you to sleep. It takes a lot of text to get where it’s going. It’s almost as if the entire thing is written in an “aside” kind of style, but more of an academic footnote than a nudge nudge wink wink kind of aside. There are these descriptions about the hows and why of things, the motivations and in places irrelevant detail. None of it really adds to the encounter the DM will be running. “A box of assorted tubers.” Oh. Ok. Thanks. “Two tuns filled with rainwater.”

Everything here is a bit … crufty. The magic items and the other mundane treasures just don’t get much here. A +2 ring. +1 swords. The variety turns up a bit when you get to the hidden treasure of the dead dragon. Paragraphs on a lamia deception. Paragraphs on a doppleganger deception. But very little in the way of making it INTERESTING.

And that’s a shame. The variety here is well done. Very little in this adventure feels forced at all. Everything fits together without pushing it at all. There’s a lot of decent little set ups, like the skeleton in the water, or the spider in the hole. Or, even, the POTENTIAL for faction play. Dead NPC parties, and a banshee bitter from her abandonment. Harpies in their filth ridden lair. It should be great. Instead it’s flat.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/125858/Advanced-Adventures-31-The-Lost-Lair-of-Drecallis?1892600

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Dungeon Magazine #93

Posted on July 30, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d93
Fun fact. I pulled the next Dungeon off the pile, looked at the cover and thought. “Fuck! Another Gith adventure?!!? And on a magic carpet?” Then I noticed I had a dup of issue 92. I would like to change my answer to “Fuck! Another adventure about melodramatic storm giants?!”

Vanity
By Bradley Schell
3e
Level 5

A pretty classic Dungeon Magazine: seven rooms in ten pages. It accomplishes this by spending a decent amount of time telling us what each room used to be used for, in detail. This, of course, adds nothing to the adventure. Several hooks are presented for this lair/tomb, one of which, a boring “you see reward posters” is expanded upon greatly. Two others are more action oriented, with the party either ambushed by four bugbears or seeing the end of a caravan ambushed. The track back leads to the complex, with a few rooms of bugbears and an ogre. A chimera (who never needs to eat .. sigh… ) guards a tomb room with a spectre. The concept of the tomb room add-on is nice, but I don’t think it really comes across as the add-on it should be. It comes off more of a paste-in than a natural part of the adventure. The entrance is a nice set piece defensive work to get past, and once that’s over the adventure one trick pony is done.

The Statue Gallery
By Johnathan M. Richards
3e
Level 9

Side-trek is a medusa gallery/cave in the underdark. The medusa wears a hat of disguise and an amulet that makes her look like a statue. She has a pert mimc, phasm, and vargouilles. I always throw up a little in my mouth when I see a hat of disguise in an adventure. It’s almost always paired with some mind-protecting magic item, so the statue amulet was a surprise.

Swamp Stomp
By Jeff Ward
3e
Level 4

Mill hook, dead relative
Doing it
“A woman named mother grundy owns this stall.”
Ok rumors

This is the usual “dragon is actually good and the princess is the bad guy” adventure. In this case the halfling mayor is the bad guy and the lizard men & naga are good. The hooks are mostly lame, including the horrendous “one of your loved ones is captured/killed” … which should never be used, ever, in any game, ever. It compensates for another hook in which one of the party members is deeded a mill, which is one of the better hook ideas. Giving the murder hobos ties to something, without punishing them for those ties, is a great way to encourage involvement. The read aloud has some truly horrid things to say, like “A woman named Mother Grundy owns this stall.” That’s a conclusion that can’t be reached by observation. Long descriptions of meaningless places, a boring swamp, a boring town … even a drifter camp is boring. How can a drifter camp be boring? AT least it’s got two halfling Coitius Companions interupted mid-haystack by lizard men. THAT’S good.

The Storm Lord’s Keep
By James Wyatt
3e
Level 21

Room after room after room after room after room after room of combat make this one of the saddest adventures pushed thus far in Dungeon. Big HP opponents. “All of the cloud giants drink fly potions before the combat.” Long read alouds. Magic walls with 720hp. This is all textbook how to not write a high level adventure. After slogging through about a million high-level fights the big bad sits down to talk to the characters. Zoinks! The only interesting thing AT ALL in this adventure is the first encounter. The players stumble upon a village preparing to be attacked. Almost everyone is level 1 or 0. Then a 5d6 hail shower starts, followed by lightning strikes, followed by cloud giants riding rocs/dragons. The overwhelming nature of the attack is quite nice, along with the challenge of the party defending them … if they choose to do so. It’s going to require quick thinking and a certain selflessness, but I think it’s an interesting challenge for a high level party … let them die? Try and save them?

Nice Polyhedron cover this issue!

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 1 Comment

Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine

Posted on July 27, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

fsw
By Logan Knight
Last Gasp Grimoire
LotFP
Level 1

Parasitic infections, stylishly cursed armour, amateur veterinary surgery, unreliable incendiary devices, edible mushrooms, spells unheard of, a wizard in need. Disgusting glory and lost limbs await you within the Sleeping Palace of the Feathered Swine

This is a cute little thirteen room cave adventure that manages to out-Lament most of the adventures published by Lamentations. A cave with excellent descriptions, gross stuff, interesting encounters, and enough of that Lamentations GRIM without going overboard in to cannibal corpse territory. Absolutely worth checking out.

The hook is, to quote “Find the wizard Felix Longworm cowering by stones and a mournful tree.” There’s another sentence that describes his former mission (removing cysts from the swine) , and then two short paragraphs that describe the process of removing the cysts. Given that the hook is one, maybe two sentences long, this is GREAT. In fact, I would suggest that the actual hook is only the first sentence and the second sentence the entirety of the “DM Background” crap that usually, in some overblown form, plagues adventures. It really doesn’t take much to get a party into an adventure in a good way and this is an excellent example. It piques their curiosity. They learn they can profit, in money or spells or equipment. Sold, AMERICAN!

The actual text of the room descriptions/encounters is divided into roughly three parts. First comes some initial impressions, followed by some DM text that elaborates on the impressions, and then there’s a small outline of the room at the bottom, showing the general shapes, entrances and exits, etc. This is an interesting format that has some similarities to that used in the more recent Maze of the Blue Medusa. These formats recognize something important that most adventures do not: it’s meant to be run by the DM. The layout/style/whatever is directly targeted at the DM, at providing them what they need to run the adventure. I’m not necessarily advocating with the particular choices made in this adventure (although I do like it) but rather lauding the choices made to aim the writing at the DM.

Adventures are technical writing with a very specific purpose. Aid the DM. Further, they’ve got a very hard problem: planting the encounters seed in the DM mind where it can grow. I mentioned above that the first part of the room descriptions are the initial impression. This is the seed pod portion of the encounter. “Dark entry cavern, rocks and shit and nothing too special. Sells of cold, stale air. Your eyes feel dusty.” It’s these feelings and impressions that are critically important to the DM. Important to lodge the room ideal in their head so they can expand and grow it, organically and on the fly, as the characters encounter and explore the room. Feather Swine does this well, keeping these impressions short and flavorful and evocative. The DM text that follows could use a little more formatting and editing to make it a bit clearer and easier to read, but that’s a pretty petty complaint.

Feathered swine presents interesting little situations. Press your luck situations. Curiosity situations. Lots of little things to get the players to risk their characters. In one room there are some holes in the walls. Crawling in to one of them gets you pulled in, all horror movie style, by the creature inside … unlike the first two holes with goodies.

Ooey ooky monsters well described. Horrific situations to encounter. Weird objects to bring back home. Easy to run by the DM. Imaginative, with a lot in common with the Weird Environments modules from Psychedelic Fantasies. Absolutely worth checking out.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/133404/Sleeping-Place-of-the-Feathered-Swine?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 9 Comments

AA #27 – Bitterroot Briar

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

brb
By Lang Waters
Expeditious Retreat Press
OSRIC
Level 2-4

The small village of Ipwich has been plagued by mystery for years. Why do some people, last seen decades ago, come stumbling out of the woods looking as young as the day they disappeared, raving mad? Why does the forest itself whisper in the blowing of the trees or the babbling of a brook, beckoning to its center? Local folklore holds that the answers to these questions lie on the other side of an immense wall of thorns in the heart of the forest, the Bitterroot Briar, as do the remains of a good number of would be riddle solvers.

This is a charming little set of encounters/adventure in a magical grove. The encounters have a nice social and faction element, and all have that folklore vibe that I enjoy. It may be a little weak in a couple of parts, particularly those related to lore … like how to get in and get out of the glade. It has a curious mix of very nice magic items and boring mundane ones. Even with those inconsistencies it’s a charming little thing.

The briar/glade is in a forest with a nearby village and the adventure starts there. There are four or five NPC’s presented, each in a paragraph or so, and they generally have strong enough personalities to add some value to the adventure. The rumor table is ok, with a really standout children’s nursery rhyme, and more verses available if the characters play with the children. That sort of integrated rumor is a very nice thing indeed, and, in fact, the entire vibe is nicely done. People wander out of the woods, lost in time, slightly mad … It’s pretty classic folklore set up. Most of the the hooks are the usual weak stuff, like generic “rumors of wealth” or “set here by your boss” kind of stuff, but a singing sword calling to you and … an Admiral Akbar round out the good ones. Yes, one of the hooks is that the evil grove is summoning adventurers to it as a trap … but it’s not a total throw away in this one. The sick mayors maid is in cahoots with an evil spellcasting snake that lives in the grove. Oh, oh! And get this! The snake just has spells he can cast! He doesn’t have levels or any bullshit like that! That’s awesome!

The wanderers in the forest are pretty decent, with most of them being unique-like encounters. Hunters afraid of their quary (an owlbear) and other various NPC’s and things to talk to. It’s all well done. As are the actual encounters once you reach the glade. A mean braggart troll, that in the end just doesn’t have much fight in him. Giant bees, spiders, crawfish, and ants that can all talk and all have some slightly different goals. It’s almost like the glade is a prison and each of the little gangs wants out, hates other people, and is looking for an edge. The usual asshat pixie, a fairy dragon, giants talking frogs. This is one of the best, if not THE best, talking animal adventures I’ve seen.

The magic items are a mix. One of the effects is that the rumors say the treasure is in the trees, and it is … you can find treasure in the dead trees. There are also these weird sympathetic magic things, like a skeleton with spider web over its eyes … that acts as a gem of seeing if you hold it up to peer through. I LOVE that kind of stuff! There’s also a flute that birds like. It doesn’t charm them. It’s doesn’t let you control them, but they tend to come around when you play it. That’s another great example of a magic item that is described by its effect rather than the rules around it. There’s also a decent number of +1 sword/+1 dagger hanging around, as well as more mundane books items. That’s too bad, those are the least interesting items in the adventure. (Although … I might make an exception for that iron flask … but then again the Misc Magic Items were always one of the best DMG sections.)

The text is a bit longer than it needs to be, with two sentences being expanded to a paragraph, but the nail sticking out to be hammered down is the … lore? This primarily impacts two areas: finding the glade in the forest and getting out of the glade (you’re trapped there once entering.) The glade has to “find you”, which is mentioned in one of the rumors, but it doesn’t really go in to much detail on what you need to do to make the glade find you. Basically, you get to wander around the forest, catching glimpses of the glade, until you commit wanton violence on the forest, stumble across a certain pixie encounter, or someone specifically listens to the wind/water for ten minutes. That’s a bit … tenuous, I think, but maybe the evil village NPC could drop some hints. The other area is escaping the grove … it’s not really obvious. The grove is clearly meant to be a bit of sandbox, but the lore on escaping has an issue: if everyone knew it then they’d all try to escape … and they all very much want to escape (with a couple of exceptions.)

Those aren’t exactly show stoppers, in any way shape or form, and they don’t detract from the adventure as a whole. A little more organization, or clarity, maybe, but otherwise I think this is a nice one, especially if you’re in to the more simplistic/folklore view of adventure.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/111704/Advanced-Adventures-27-Bitteroot-Briar?1892600

Posted in Level 2, No Regerts, Reviews | 3 Comments

Dungeon Magazine #92

Posted on July 23, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d92
So, here’s a poser: is Dungeon Magazine a poetry magazine or a house organ? By this, I mean does the magazine staff have a directive to preserve the author’s writing, no matter how bad, or do they have an obligation to publish something decent? Yes, I’m being hyperbolic. Either the staff didn’t know what a good adventure was, or they felt a need to preserve the author’s voice or they just didn’t get enough pages to fill the magazine and took anything.

Interlopers of Ruun-Khazai
By David Noonan
3e
Level 13

Thirty pages for an “empty rooms” adventure. Generic hooks send the party to a fortress/rock on the astral plane. Right after they arrive some githZ and githY show up. FIghts happens. Then the current owner of the fortress shows up and attacks everyone. This thing has almost nothing going for it. There’s nothing special about the fortress, and almost all of the rooms are empty, so it’s not really an exploration mission. There’s a timeline for the three factions, so it does have that to help things out, but the factions are all essentially mad dogs, except maybe for the Z’s who will at least talk. Otherwise it’s all “explore empty room and get attacked by a roving band of gith.” Long descriptions for empty rooms and trivia about Gith culture means Frustrated Author rather than Fun Adventure. Travel to the fortress/astral plane is glossed over, and the monsters take at least half a page each to describe. Wasn’t there an OSR adventure about a pass with crystals and factions in it and and old battlefield? Go get that instead. (dammit! I can’t find the name!)

The Swarm
By Tito Leati
3e
Level 1

The party tracks down some goblins in the mountains. While travelling in the mountains the party stumbles upon some bickering dwarves with a dwarf body from their recent goblin ambush. The party can return the body or find the dwarves taken prisoner. The mount is, essentially, a pointcrawl, since it’s hard to get from place to place except along the narrow paths/passes. It’s got decent wanderers with a lot of personality, and a very nice “old map” the party finds that goes along with the DM’s map. The encounters have some decent variety, although the suspension of disbelief is pushed at time. (“When the party passes they have no chance to spot the hidden paths the goblins use to ambush them.”) This isn’t a stellar adventure, but it the wordiness were resolved then it would be an ok adventure with decent variety and choices. Also, Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. And this adventure ain’t Thomas Jefferson.

Return of the Blessed Damozel
By Frank Brunner
3e
Level 11

Side-trek. In a city park the party finds a woman berating a tough looking kid. Her dead daughter, his ex-lover, wants him to turn from his evil (Thug Life!) ways. The party can help convince him. Regardless, his friends (6 3rd level fights) show up to prevent him from leaving the gang. The rakshasa gang leader may show up also, which is why, I guess, this is level 11? Gang war in a park, all Sharks & Jets or Warriors style, woudl be cool, but that’s not really what it going on here. A mashup of this, the gith warfare adventure, and a good adventure would be cool. Rumble in the city park!

The Razing of Redshore
By James Jacobs
3d
Level 20

“Awakened sperm whale druid” wages war against assassins guild, destroying overly-described town. After four attack events the party meets the whale in event five, followed by exploring a five room underwater cave, the guild headquarters, and then a final assassination attempt on the party. The town portion is mostly meaningless, except for a couple of clues, and doesn’t justify the pages spent on it. The events are ok, I guess, if the party is using divination to explore the town for clues, as ways to introduce some life into the adventure. The caves feature a level 9 cleric gargantuan kraken and are not TOO bad. The guild fortress is an excuse to have a lot of assassins using their death abilities on the party. “Four assassins all do death strike on you, mr crappy saving throw. You die.” Good high level adventures/challenges have always been a problem for D&D.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 3 Comments

Vault of the Faceless Giants

Posted on July 20, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

vfg
By Richard LeBlanc Jr.
New Big Dragon Games Unlimited
Labyrinth Lord
Level 1-3

In a jungle village a complains that her baby has been taken. A lot of the villagers think she abandoned it in the jungle or a tiger got it. Individually they come to the party to relate rumors of an evil temple in the jungle. Inside is a dungeon with some psionic properties, if you are so inclined to use them.

This adventure is in a fifty-two room dungeon with a largely ring layout, symmetrical. It has a weird vibe to it. It has a lot of the elements that I would expect to find in an old school dungeon, but it is … plain? Boring? The writing here just doesn’t grip one very strongly. I’m also VERY suspicious of the ring hallway layout. Combined with a few other elements, I just can’t get into this.

The biggest problem with this adventure is probably the writing. I’ll cite a couple of specific examples of it being non-specific, but there’s something else going on and I’m not sure how to describe it. The writing is … technical? It’s very straightforward. It’s pretty clear. And it’s generally boring. I can cite a couple of examples of abstracted descriptions, like a bow that is described as “amazing craftsmanship” or a dagger that is described as “particularly well taken care of.” These descriptions are abstracted. They are conclusions. Rather than describe the dagger, or bow, and letting the player draw a conclusion that they are well taken care of (and therefore special) or of great craftsmanship, instead the read-aloud makes that conclusion for the party. This kind of genericism is the opposite of ecovative writing that inspires the DM and/or players. There’s something else going on with the writing though and I’m having trouble really putting words to what the issue is. The descriptions are boring because the writing style is just not exciting. Is that the right way to say this? Not dynamic? Not inspiring? I don’t know. It’s technical, and the elements are all there, and it doesn’t necessarily fall in to the trap of describing the mundane, but it doesn’t really make me excited to run the rooms either.

Here’s an example. It’s a little heavy on the number specificity (which I don’t think is appropriate in read-alaoud in particular) but that’s not really the problem: “48 straw mats are arranged in a 6×8 pattern in this 30’×40′ room. The walls are painted golden yellow, save for a large white symbol painted in the center of the west wall showing the symbol for the third/plexus chakra.
In each corner of the room, set on the floor, is an ornately-carved ebony incense holder featuring a seated figure. The room is permeated by the scent of lemon and myrh.” It’s an ok description. But not a great description.

Some of you may recall the chess-players room in the Dwimmermount draft. The room had two ghostly players playing chess. They ignored the party and you could not interact with them in any way. There are some of the same sorts of rooms in this adventure, rooms in which there is trivia rather than something to interact with. I’m not going to assert that every room has to be to fun and exciting, or that dungeons have no room for mysteries or empty rooms. This is something else. It’s presenting something that COULD be interesting but without any elements for the players to interact with or use the room. One of the early rooms in the dungeon has steam in it, that comes in through cracks, doesn’t go into the hallways, and dissipates, with the effect having a random chance each time the party enters. That’s it. This isn’t hinting at a volcano or steam later on. It’s not a terrain effect for a challenge. It just is. This is only one example. Murals and funerary are steam rooms are fine, but they need to contribute to the adventure … and these do not.

I am QUITE suspicious of the map as well. It’s symmetrical, and I’m not a fan of those, but the bigger issue is the ring nature of it. Imagine a long hallway that forms a circle, and bisecting the circular line are rooms. You must go into the rooms to walk the hallway. That is, essentially, the dungeon and it is, essentially, a linear layout, with all the faults and lack of options that come with that sort of design. There’s also a large number of monsters, humans mostly, that come out of suspended animation to attack the party, another element that I’m predisposed to enjoy. It just seems lazy. Combined with several other rooms where the read aloud has the monster immediately attacking, it’ just doesn’t seem interesting.

There are more than a few unique magic items, and some of the items descriptions ARE decent, like a +1 dagger with an ivory handle in the shape of a serpentine dragon with red fringed silk tassels. That’s something worth keeping, if you’re a player. It’s also got a classic set up or two like a giant spider guarding a gem. Those are all great examples of doing things well.

I just can’t get into this one.

It’s $5 at rpgnow.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/166283/PA1-Vault-of-the-Faceless-Giants?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

A Thousand Dead Babies

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

1000
By Zzarchov Kowolski
Self-Published
Neoclassical Greek Revival/OSR
Level 1

A small little town in the grips of some religious turmoil. It switched to follow the Holy Church about a generation ago, throwing o their ties to the Old Gods (mostly). There are some hold outs. Recently however, tales of demon worship and witchcraft have begun to ourish, leading the young and inexperienced priest to enter a panic.

This delightful little gem describes the goings-on around the village of Corroc. It’s a small little village that could be used as a starting location or as a place the party is passing through. This place is a powder keg. There are a lot of factions running around and the NPC’s have enough life in them that a little of fire, say, from a party of murder hobos, is going to set the place off. Devil worshipers, pagans, the church, local lords, illicit affairs … and the cried of babies from the woods at night … You need this little gem in your life. It’s duel-stated for OSR & NGR in a kind of minimalist way … the way I like it.

The village is only briefly described, in a paragraph or so, with about another paragraph for a nearby village. It’s got a Harn-like feel to it … if Harn villages were full of gas and kids playing with matches. I like this kind of realisism, that’s relatable, without all of the slippage in to the NoFunZone that realism can frequently slip in to. Reeves. Asshole lords. Taxes. Intra-village gossip. You then get into the heart: the eight or so NPC’s that generally drive the action in the village. The NPC’s get about a long paragraph each, and the paragraph has a little about their personality and a little gasoline. The personalities are great, and generally thread in to the gasoline. For example, the smith is 15 and new to the village. He’s not very good, but doesn’t tell anyone that, faking his skill. To directly quote: “He is desperate for business and will tell the players anything he thinks they wish to hear to try and encourage them to buy or commission something from him. This includes implying people may be witches, especially if he thinks the players will then want to buy hot irons. He can make those.” Oh my goodness! And the village priest is good-hearted and rational. And having an affair with a local farm girl, sneaking around at night. And her father will disown her if it he finds out. And the local herbalist is old, has red hair, is a wise woman, is a loner, has a black cat, and the village thinks she’s a witch. Except for the priest, who is rational and knows these are just stereotypes. Except she IS a witch! And it goes on and on. I think anyone reading this now has a head FULL of ideas where some of this can go, and that’s only three or four NPC’s. The NPC’s focus on the the personality quirks and situations that the can drive the characters actions, instead of just being trivia the way they are in most adventures.

The location descriptions are likewise evocatively written (with a couple of exceptions) and serve to fulfill EXACTLY what you think they should, again with the focus on character interaction and how they will encounter the location.

Magic items are all unique. Bones. Spellooks with tattoo’d skin in them. A pouch full of teeth. A rose that’s ever-fresh and impacts spellcaster. A cursed wicker baby basket that creates a newborn baby every day … fuck man! That’s AWESOME! Think of the possibilities of that coming in to your game!

Speaking of possibilities, one column of the text describes the aftermath. What happens if the party destroys the cult, or the pagans, or the church, or some combination thereof. And again, this ain’t just trivia. Enemies, allies, land, a town cursed forever more, brutal knight justice.

I love this thing. Simple. Short. Sticky. If it has a problem then it may be the need for a few other things going on in the village, some way to bring all of the other people to life while the party is out getting into trouble with the main NPC’s.

It’s $5 on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110659/A-Thousand-Dead-Babies?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 5 Comments

Dungeon Magazine #91

Posted on July 16, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d91
Challenge of Champions IV
By Johnathan M. Richards
3e
Any Level

The fourth installment of the puzzle adventure series. The characters enter a tourney with no spells, items, etc, and everything is provided to them in each room, on scrolls, etc. They have to figure out the puzzle/win the fight to get out. Having just recently reviewed the Maze of the Blue Medusa, I’m struck by the similarity between the Champions series and the type of adventures i really enjoy, as exemplified by Maze. Both present some unique rooms which have a puzzle-like aspect to them. Bizarre things. I think this really gets to the heart of the nonlinear player-driven choices that, I think at least, drives old school play. Champions turns me off because of the forced nature of it. Not only the fact that it’s a tourney with all abilities taken away (forcing the PLAYERS to adventures instead of relying on their characters min/max’ing) but also because there’s generally a ‘correct’ solution presented for the room. Compared to Tower of the Stargazer, or Maze of the Blue Medusa, or the better Darkness Beneath levels, we can see the difference: the true old school adventures just throw your ass in and expect the players to use their characters to get past the room any which way they can with few if any assumptions. The popularity of this series, which gets a little close to the OSR style, stands in stark contrast to the linear crap-fests that plague D&D.

The Rock and the Hard Place
By Brian Corvello
3e
Level 16

A side-trek. The party is literally caught in the middle of a street between a deva and a gelugon. Seven pages for one combat. A new low for Dungeon Magazine?

Bogged Down
By Terry Edwards
3e
Level 1

The road is washed out and before it can be repaired the bodies washing up from the old cemetary need to removed. The issue is the dead guy that shows up. Tracking him through the swamp reveals his wife “the swamp witch”, who’s a little nuts. Her husband was murdered and now he’s a bog mummy. Tracking him to the old ruined city gets some evidence which allows the party to confront some mercenaries on the cut off village. It’s an ok adventure, but overblown for what it is. A couple of giant centipedes, the bog mummy, and then the mercs. Not much going on. Some more village color (actually, less words and more color, the village portion is quite lengthy already) and some more swamp color (there’s a “friendly” lizard man out there already.) More color, less words. It’s trying, but not succeeding, in creating the flooded village, swamp, and ruined city.

Sloth
By J/ Bradley Schell
3e
Level 6

Side-trek. Five pages for an air elemental trapped in a one-room hut. The only interesting thing is the entrails of the summoning wizard scattered around the walls of the hut. Next month, read the exciting twenty page adventure that has a giant rat in an empty room!

The Legend of Gathulga
By Tim Hitchcock
3e
Level 1

Nine pages for a giant boar and a couple of halflings. Lots of read-aloud and DM notes for rooms and locations irrelevant to the adventure! I seriously have no fucking clue what the magazine staff were thinking.

Kambranex’s Machinations
By Robert Lee
3e
Level 9

In my ignorance, I declare this to be the first 4e-style adventure in Dungeon. Linear. Full of bullshit flavor that is either irrelevant or justifies the unique monsters existence. Anyway, the monsters here all have a half-machine template attached to them. You find a wilman being attacked by them, save him, his shamen asks you, out of the kindness of your hearts, to save them all by killing the wizard creating them. You proceed through four or so more scene-based encounters/fights before hitting a mostly-linear seven room dungeon. One of the scenes has some read aloud that is something like “The magmin stop frolicking and dancing and their leaders says PLEASE GO KILL THE HYDRA AND WE WILL TELL YOU WHERE THE EVIL WIZARD IS.” There’s just not even a pretext to this shit. Lots and lots of words justifying shit, but little for the players. One of the combats/scenes is only a single column long, so at least it’s straight up about it just being combat. Oh, and, of course, the dungeon at the end has magic walls preventing all of the usual stuff. BULL. SHIT.

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Famine at Holderfield

Posted on July 13, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

famhold
By Frank Schmidt
Self-Published
5e
Level 2

This tongue in cheek adventure brings new PCs into a small town after an adventure. Upon arrival they quickly discover that the small agricultural community has just been robbed of its harvest supply. With the seasonal change coming those supplies are necessary for the town’s survival. One of the victims of the attack was an alchemist. Contained within his bag were a few Potions of Growth. The bitter taste of the potion disagreed with the bandit who discovered it and he flung it into a field. Unfortunately for the PCs oversized fowl must be overcome before dealing with the bandits.

This is a short linear adventure with only five encounters, all combats, all in a row. It has some decent ideas, but executes the adventure poorly. It is really just something like notes you might jot down five minutes a game, and then each expanded to fill twelves pages … if you wrote linear combat adventures.

The idea here is that you stumble into an inn and upon a meeting of farmers. A traveller has been beaten unconscious and the farmers harvest has been stolen by five bandits. After they stare you down for a bit, they ask you to go get it back. The In Medias Res portion of coming in to a heated farmers meeting, the tenseness of you staring them down as they think you are bandits returning, and the badly eaten man on the table … this is all good and is the kind of “just a little bit more detail” that I’m usually looking for. It’s presented in a conversational and remote third-person style of voice that I don’t really get into: “Upon arrival the farmers will take a defensive stance against the party initially until they can be convinced they aren’t raiders.” Not exactly edge of your seat, but there’s enough to get the DM’s juices flowing, even if it does take most of a page (single column, big text) to get there.

Leaving the tavern to track down the bandits the party then faces three encounters in a row with giants chicks/hens/turkeys. The pacing here is WAY off. One encounter with giant chicks is great. It made me sit up and say “Hey, great! Cool! New monsters!” And then the next one . And the next one. And the next one. All linear. One after another. And switching up from Giant chicks, to a giant hen and chicks, and then more giant hens and chicks, and then a giant turkey is NOT providing variety. It’s a boring combat grind. Followed by a boring bandit combat grind.

The adventure tries to have some fun, in a way. There’s a wanted poster provided as well as a nice size comparison chart comparing the giant fowl to human sizes. Both of these are nice touches to help the DM and communicate flavor. And then it goes and ruins it with some REALLY bad choices. The one that immediately comes to mind is a “roll to continue the adventure” check. Someone needs to make a DC12 check in order to track the bandits back to their lair. I don’t have a problem with the party failing an adventure. I do have a problem with that failure being on account of a tracking roll. If they piss an obviously needed NPC off, then great, they fail. Die in combat? Great, they fail. Miss a bullshit no reason for it to exist DC 12 check? Nope. Uncool.

It also makes the chickens shrink again. This is un-fun. The chicks have grown because of a growth potion they drank. It makes sense they would shrink again, after 12 hours. It’s also lame. Walking around with giant chicken armor, having a giant turkey drumstick, a giant turkey wishbone, giant feathers … the amount of fun is ENDLESS. But the recommendation is to not have it. To take it away. The bonus the characters would get is trivial but the fun the players would have is massive, so the decision doesn’t make sense to me. Another example of realism getting in the way of fun in an elf game.

The cover is reminiscent of an OSR adventure, all hex-crawly and the like. Inside is as linear a 4e adventure as was ever written. Me has sads.

Free at rpgnow.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/166447/FVC14–Famine-at-Holderfield?1892600

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Dungeon Magazine #90

Posted on July 9, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d90
The Elfwhisper
By J.C. Alvarez
3e
Level 8

Oh, to mourn for what could have been. The party is trying to find a bandit in some woods and stumbles upon some cursed elves … who they COULD choose to free. This adventure has a lot going for it, and a lot going against it. It feels VERY padded … that all of the good parts were expanded upon with useless drivel. It’s got some decent rumors in town. You see, the adventure starts a bit forward. The party is looking for a bandit and makes it to a town the bandit was seen near. This entire beginning is abstracted and not really dealt with, which is GREAT. An ok hook, abstracted and essentially ignored by the text, with the first real parts of the adventure being the first part the party has a choice in: the town. The rumors are all in first person format, with folksy stories and so on, to add to that “Detail makes the Story” thing I like to harp about. A lot of the good information is presented in bullet form and the read-aloud. In fact, as an experiment, I might photocopy the pages and cut those out and see how the adventure travels. It would be A LOT shorter and I suspect loose nothing. In practice, this makes it easy to dig through the crap and find the bits you need. The bandits are all just pretext to get the party in to a haunted wood and have them meet some cursed ghost elves who plead for help. It’s done VERY well. You find the bandit leader, in a kind of anti-climactic (but perfect for the adventure) way, trapped in quicksand, led there by a will o the wisp. His mean are nearby, slaughtered. The party watch them rise as shadows. This last part is handled in, I think, two sentences, and is rife with the kind of great imagery that I’m looking for. “As the PC’s search the bodies of the dead bandits darken and fade away. Soon there’s nothing human left of them, as the corpses dissolve in to a sickly black mist.” These two sentences, combined with a previous description of the horror on the bodies, provides great imagery for the DM. It’s got a lot going for it, from an abstracted pointcrawl style to helping encounters to get the party on track if lost. It’s got some great cursed hags also. On the downside, there IS a lot of text. This is so common for Dungeon it’s almost unfair to hold it against it. The cursed elf ghosts are well done, but the entire middle portion, with them, feels more like an interlude in a movie, with lots of exposition. I’m not sure how to fix it. The… sadness? Of the ghosts needs to be conveyed, but the entire section is WAY too long for what it is: some flavor text to set mood. The hag caves (three beautiful elf maidens …) are essentially all crap. Just room after room stuffed with silly monsters. A hill giant here, crocs there, a water elemental. In fact, I’m getting to the point where seeing an elemental in an adventure means the designer didn’t try very hard. As with “animated objects”, they COULD be awesome … but are generally a crutch for weak design. Anyway, while the hags prepr are nice, the environment they are in does not jive with the hag encounter. They feel disconnected, their minions and the hags proper. The ghost/hag portion is optional and the adventure is laid out much like, I suspect, many games were at home in the 3e era: here’s some highlights jotted down on a notepad. It’s not exactly linear, or a railroad … or, maybe, it IS both of those things, but without the negative connotations they have come to mean. The players can still opt out and it’s not a straight A to B to C thing, but they are clearly connected in that way and WILL be experienced in that way. It’s more like the major areas are connected, linearly, but you have choices on what you do and where you go. Anyway, not exactly my style, but it’s got a decent human element to it and a decent ghostly element and a decent mythic element with the elf maiden hags. This is another one worth ripping off and/or fixing. Also: nice art!

Totentanz
By Bernard Mees
3e
Level 4

This has a nice concept, and beginning, and then fails to continue to deliver. Rumors are heard of a cursed village. Investigating finds a village populated by skeletons, going about their daily lives. This leads to a wizard’s keep and then to a keep in which a princess is a soon to be wife of a Wraith King. The start is pretty nicely done, with rumors of a cursed village, encounters on the road with notable notables, and then finally the eerie village people. It’s all got a very strong folklore feel to it, a kind of quiet horror forest vibe. Then it becomes boring. Some clues can lead to a wizard keep and some boons inside, but the wizard’s keep is boring. It’s described boring and has little of interest in it. The keep of the wraith king follows in the same vein: boringly described and boring encounters. At one point you meet the last living people in the village … who have nothing to tell you. No doubt the party will focus on them as a source of protection, but there’s nothing there. “Help us escape” is fine, but why they survived so long is a problem. So, steal the beginning, up to and including the cursed town, and drop it in to something more interesting.

Prey for Tyrinth
By Tim Hitchcock
3e
Level 5

A fifteen room flooded cave with a water naga in it. The focus here is on the party really feeling out of their element, and the element being on the side of the monster. Go in to a new area, the naga fucks with you, you deal with it by maybe burning some resources/spells, and then go to the next area. “The monster, in its native environment, taking advantage of its abilities” isn’t such a bad idea and it’s certainly a lot better than those old three room lairs that used to appear in supplements and adventures, to this day. It’s a little Hit & Run/Ambushy, as presented, and a few more words against DM Fiat may have been in order. It’s hard to call it good, since it’s essentially 15 hit & run attacks against the party, but it serves the purpose it was written for, without too much extra bullshit.

Tears for Twilight Hollow
By Angel Leigh McCoy & Christopher Perkins
3e
Level 7

Forty three pages. Please, Hermes the great, the great, the great, give me the power to make it through this.

Nope. Stupid fucking lame adventure, poorly organized. Ok, MOSTLY stupid. Arrive in village, the people distrust you, see a funeral, get sent by cleric to where the paladin died to look in to bandits/etc, run around a swamp valley for a bit, a ghost sends you back to town hinting the cleric is evil, other people in town hint cleric is evil, discover evil catacombs, confront cleric.

The main hook here is interesting: escorting a bridal party (with the implied fun of that) and ending up in an innocuous location: Twilight Hollow. That’s not so bad of an idea to get the party someplace “normal” for an adventure. There’s lots of little weird encounters to illustrate their distrustful stance, but little to actually bring the village to life beyond that. IE: the events presume you hanging around but there nothing there to hang around fo. Eventually you get sent on a quest to a valley to figure out what killed a paladin, and do it because you are good people, I guess. The swamp valley is done well, but the entire thing is pointless. The actual instruction to the DM are something like “when they have wasted enough time in the valley, have them encounter the ghost that points them back to the town.” Uncool. Likewise, in town you THEN have some encounters that lead you to catacombs under the village, but NOT before you go to the valley! That’s the worse kind of railroading. I get what they are trying to do, but it’s carried out VERY poorly. The catacombs under the town house about a zillion evil cultists, all unknown to the village. The concept of the catacombs, and their separate areas is a good one, if inconsistently carried out. In particular the locations and evil-NPC’s have mountains of backstory that won’t come up in play. Also, the cleric wears a ring of mind shielding and the words “ethereal xill cleric of loviatar” are written in the adventure. Yeah, things get shitty at the end. The feeling of fear and paranoia and Who Can You Trust never really comes through. It’s just a hack a thon.

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