Dungeon Magazine #79

Posted on April 23, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d79
Keep for Sale
By Peter Zollers
AD&D
Levels 1-3

This is quite a nice little adventure and has several elements atypical for Dungeon Magazine. A grifter has a deed for a castle and sells mps to it for some gold so prospective buyers can check it out before purchase. The castle is a wreck and so no one ever buys and he’s free to sell another map. There’s a small overland portion with two distinctive areas, one mostly civilized and one mostly not, along with a short paragraph on a rough and tumble border outpost. The keep has two parts: the outer part and an inner tower, with dungeon below. The outer part has goblins and an ogre exploring while the inner part has Seawolves. Neither group has to be hostile and talking is possible with both (gasp!) and you could play one party against the other. There are prisoners to rescue, trapdoors to other areas, and some NPC/oddities entities to interact with. The treasure is not magnificent but IS presented in a more interesting fashion than most adventures. I like this one a lot. It’s got the usual wordiness problems and get a little detailed in the prescriptive “if X then Y” nonsense advice. It’s a charming little adventure with possabilities and lots to interact with.

The Best Laid Plans
By Kent Ertman
AD&D
Levels 1

This is a two-page side-trek, and maybe the one truest to the vision of the side-trek, as I understand the concept. The party sees men riding hastily by and disappearing into a certain area. In town they learn he’s a famous bandit, with a fat reward on his head. There’s a small six room cave complex that it mostly traps/early warning for the bandit lair beyond. Probably a big bandit fight at the end, but it does have a zipline! A little too much “and then here’s another trap, and then …” for me, but I like the hook/concept and the focus, keeping it to two pages, is nice.

Bad Seeds
By Kevin Carter
AD&D
Levels 1-3

This short adventure takes a long time to get where it’s going. After a stay at a rural inn the party wakes to find everyone gone. Then some kobolds attack. This leads to the lair of a plant cult. The lair is small but has a nicely creative layout, complete with giant turtle skeleton/shell entrance in a hill and a bridge over a river chasm inside. This could and should be a lot shorter. The quite interesting map isn’t quite large enough, at only seven rooms, to take advantage of the multiple levels and elevation changes in it. IE: fit this all in two-pages and it would be an ok side-trek.

Cloudkill
By Jeff Fairborn
AD&D
Levels 4-8

This adventure has one central idea and then wraps a lot of garbage around it. There’s one large cave chamber, a foundry, run by derro. Multi-levels, lots of equipment, derro guards, workers, slaves, names slaves, captured prisoners, bugbears guards, all essentially in this one large complex chamber. Slag buckets, ladders, ledges, chains, the whole works. That’s the main encounter. It would work as a stealth plan, or one large mini’s combat scene at a con. It’s surrounded by some garbage about flying horses and some token aerial combat with manticores and blood birds during what is, essentially, one large and long hook. Way, way, WAY too much text describing the factory in order to be usable. The encounter area would be interesting if it were GREATLY simplified in text length.

The Akriloth
By Matthew G. Adkins
AD&D
Levels 10-12

I take it back. Cloudkill, above, is the SOUL of tersity compared to this one. Underwater fetch quest in an old merman temple. Bullshit lame intro intro and backstory, as is usual for Dungeon. The temple has several levels and is notable in that is has a lot of larger rooms and a lot of empty rooms that are not described. It’s got a random room generator table section in back to help fill in, but there’s not really much interesting on the table. The rooms commit one of the capital sins in their at-least-one-column-of-text-per-room descriptions: lengthy descriptions of what the now-ruined rooms were once used for and held. The text length is a MAJOR turn off. There’s not much in the way of interesting encounters, anything halfway decent is ruined by the railroading DM advice. It all boils down to combat after combat. 🙁

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 2 Comments

Maze of the Blue Medusa

Posted on April 18, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

mbm
by Patrick Stuart & Zak Sabbath
Satyr Press
Fantasy RPG’s
Level: 1-4 if you’re smart. 5-10 if not.

Infinite broken night. Milky alien moons. Wavering demons of gold. Held in this jail of immortal threats are three perfect sisters…

Known then that it is the year 2016. The known universe is ruled by the DIY RPG. Future generations shall think themselves accursed they were not here and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks they played Maze of the Blue Medusa.

Executive Summary:
The PDF is $5. It’s magnificent. This is the type of D&D I want to play. Go buy it.

This is a 304 room dungeon described over 144 pages. It houses a medusa “timeless eons old” who runs the place kind of like a prison, petrifying the worst of the worst. It’s not a maze, in the minotaur/labyrinth sense, but rather a large (304 rooms!) and complex map. Some of her friends live there. Some nut jobs are running around. It’s magnet for anyone and everyone who is interested in a timeless eons medusa and the threats she imprisons. This isn’t a hack piece where monsters attack when you enter the room. Some people are going to be turned off by the flavor of this. It’s not orcs in rooms. If you can handle Planescape then you can handle Maze of the Blue Medusa. And you should. It’s one of the best adventures ever produced, ranking among the best both in creative content and usability.

In the forward there’s a short note from the publisher. He notes that games can contain art & writing better than most of the work spat out from the big four publishers or hung up in Soho. Clearly referring to his own publishing industry, the existence of a work like Maze of the Blue Medusa makes one wonder about the big publishers in our own little niche. The dreck keeps rolling out from the big names doing work for the big RPG publishers. I have no idea why people tolerate it. The blathering platitudes of the fanboys shouting THANK YOU SIR PLEASE SIR MAY I HAVE ANOTHER (Princes of the Apocalypse sits with a rating of 90% at ENWorld.) gives one pause. And then something like Maze of the Blue Medusa comes along and you can breathe again. I should retract that last statement. Nothing like Maze of the Blue Medusa has come along before.

Patrick has written a lot of great content on his blog as well as putting out the masterful Deep Carbon Observatory. DCO is one of my favorites of all time; a magnificent work of terseness and evocative language with wonderful situations centered around the players characters. Zak has published a couple of excellent gaming supplements and writes pretty insightful adventure commentary on his blog. His writings are spot on when it comes to adventure design. Will two great tastes taste great together? Of course. I already said they did. You did go buy this, right?

Forgive me while I stick my head up my own ass a bit before I get to the usual bits of reviewing. There are a couple of interesting things going on with this adventure that go beyond my usual review criteria. First, in relation to DCO, this is different. It shares the creativity and evocative language of DCO, but that’s about it. I think Patrick has published three things so far. Each has been very distinct from the others. That’s quite remarkable.

Second, the adventure has a different style. It’s make different assumptions. Most of the WOTC/TSR campaign settings are just D&D. High D&D. Low D&D. King D&D. Space D&D. A foray into CoC. And then there was Planescape. It was different, somehow. It made different assumptions, it had a different feel. Clearly on the same D&D spectrum but way down at the end of it. There’s an OSR game, Mazes & Minotaurs, I think? It does a bit of the same thing. Instead of Gygax/etc writing D&D based on LoTR and Appendix N, it presumes that instead that context did not exist and they made a fantasy RPG based around their love of Greek myths and legends. Maze of the Blue Medusa feels closer to that. There was this vibe in Caverns of Thracia where things felt a bit … older? A bit more mythic or inspired by things other than Appendix N. A little more classical, in reference to the greek. Maze of the Blue Medusa ramps that up. Where Thracia may have dipped it’s toes in then Medusa is some magnificent mash up of a classical vibe and the weirdness from Planescape and/or Vornheim. Mosaics come to life. Philosophers. Tragedy. Things come in threes. Three swords, three sisters, and so on. Creatures and NPC’s take on platonic qualities. “I do not age.” “All who see me love me.” and so on. It’s not similar to the classics because it has a medusa in it. It’s similar to the classics because of the themes and re use of the shared consciousness from those stories. This creates, I think, some kind of universal context that almost everyone can relate to. This may be a bit off putting to folks who want their standard orcs and standard ogres to fight their standard Wizards and stands dragonborn fighter in a standard set piece room. It appeals to a different kind of play, a kind of play that I find exciting and wonderful. A play centered around the imagination. Tower of the Stargazer had this, to a certain small degree. The Tower of Gygax con games and to a lesser extent the DCC “continuous play” games have this as well. A kind of raw purity that you then interact with, but not so much in the mechanical way that Standard D&D has become.

One more thing. This plays with format in the same way that the One Page Dungeons do, and in the same way Stonehell does. I’m big on things beings USABLE at the table. This means the product, in form + function (hey, I bought my sofa from Helmut at that store!), must help the DM run the adventure. The one page dungeons focus on that. Everything is on one page, the DM is never hunting. Stonehell does that also. A couple of pages of introduction for each level just to get you oriented and then everything including the map, on one page. These format are, I think, all trying to solve the problem with the DM having to take notes. You read the source material, in the case of Stonehell, and then the map and keyed entries, all on the same page, serve as your notes. They trigger you to remember what you read earlier in the more extensive couple of pages about the level. If you don’t get it all right then who cares? You’re the DM, it’ll be ok. Medusa tries a different formula to do something similar. Hmmm, actually, I might say it’s very similar to the Stonehell formula. There’s a big overall map, of course, but the sections of the dungeon are split up into little parts. Each little part has it’s own map. Two maps, actually, spread out over two facing pages. One map has pretty pictures on it, along with ONE sentences, usually short, describing the room. The second … Fuck fuck fuck. I’m getting ahead of myself. More on the maps later. For this section let me say that there’s a map, with notes, and a short key with a couple of sentences per room, on facing pages. The next couple of pages describes the keyed rooms in more detail. The intent is that you read the entre section once through and then actually run the adventure from the facing map/terse-key facing pages. IE: one page per section, just like Stonehell. But oh so much better than Stonehell in both form + function.

Ok, meta-gushing is over. Time for specific gushing. Again, my standard warning apply: I don’t think I do a good job reviewing good adventures. I’m too excited.

The language used to describe the various encounters, objects, and NPC’s is stunning. Longtime readers will recall that I think that the purpose of the adventure text, the actual language used, is to inspire the DM. One well crafted sentence can do more than pages of boring fact-based dreck in communicating the vibe and feel that the designer is going for. The most important tool the designer has is the DM. If the designer can communicate the swirling chaos of the idea in their head to the DM, effectively, then the DM can take it and run with it, expanding it, augmenting it. So many designers fail in this. I’m sure that in their head they have something great and wonderful swirling around … but they then fail to get it out of their head and on to the page in a way that communicates their idea to the DM. Not so Maze of the Blue Medusa! Here’s an example from the garden: Bad Statues: Everything is black. Flares and vines grow around and into black soapstone statues depicting the forgotten dead.” Wonderful! Even without reading the supplemental text I can picture the scene in my head and I immediately start to expand on it! The black light of dead stars! A mixture of the dead and black thriving plants. Shades of black. It’s great. Massive hearts molted with a pulsing green. Pathetic, unwary, mute and terribly dangerous, NO-FACE is a shambling and tendrilled beart that guards the pipes. Constant screaming laughter drifting through all of the surrounding rooms. These descriptions inspire. They make you WANT to run the room/adventure. They make you want to draw others in and have them experience them as well. “Soft cello music emanates from this room. It is the music of the Moon Man mourning his stolen sons.” You don’t need a thesaurus to write an impactful description.

The encounters proper are creative and full of potential energy. “Hiding in the darkness behind the fallen shelves is an ID pig.” That’s full of action! Characters poking about in a ruined scene, full of shadows and potential danger. A sudden bursting out of a squealing pig. One of the first rooms, available in the preview I believe, is the Starlit Stones. Shadows turn into pits in this room, allowing you to fall into the pit shadow cast from a fellow party member if you are unaware/not careful. It’s weird. It’s not explained WHY. It just IS. Zak & Patrick understand that you don’t need to understand the why’s, you just need to know enough to run the room. Room after room after room. Some one to interact with. Some thing to interact with. Something weird. Something mysterious. One of the great joys of an environment like this is the players having their characters mix and match what they find to overcome obstacles. Maybe they come up with some need, later on, to trap someone in a shadow, or sea someone away. Ta da! Goofy plan time! Let’s lure it to the pit room! Escher stairs, with gravity reorienting toward the door last opened. Line walking with consequences … and creatures nearby that know and lurk. How about tiny lilliputian toy machines committing crimes of war? No? How about “A curly-horned devil with a twisted blade. He paces back and forth on cloven feet, listening at the western door, waiting for his chance, whispering to the knife he holds: “Now ..? Wait … now?” Jesus! Can you imagine?!?! I mean, now that we’ve been infected with the idea seed you obviously CAN imagine. That’s the entire point. Potential. Energy. Interaction. The players are confronted with a situation. I don’t even think I have the words to describe it. (Maybe that’s why I have a problem describing good adventures?) It’s not that it’s in medias res. It’s something else. You WANT to know what’s going on. It lures you in. It does this time and time again. It’s magnificent.

I count 139 named individuals in this adventure to interact with. Not monsters. Essentially, every creature you meet has a name. Every one has a motivation, something they want, something they don’t’ want, and at least a modicum of a personality. One of the key difference between this adventure and most others, and what it shares with the best, is that you can interact with the creatures you meet. This is SO much more interesting than just getting attacked by everything. It adds roleplaying, and plotting, crosses and double-crosses, and maybe even make friends and allies.The creatures are in the keys, but also summarized in the rear for easy reference. That section is an excellent aid to playability, ease to use, ease to find what you need, and the creatures/NPC’s goals. Here’s one of the entries I’m fond of “Waerlga: Animated statue of a Vampire. Telepathic, but can’t move. Very well informed about crowned heads. Wants: Blood spread all over hi. Someone to turn the lights off. Does Not Want: To be destroyed. That’s wonderful! The interaction possibilities for the party are mind-boggling! You can ALWAYS resort to hacking someone, but to be offered other choices … wonderful! The stories I remember are the ones where the hero is talking to the creature, and outsmarts them, or takes advantage of them, or does them a boon. Besides, there’s NOTHING more delicious than tempting a party with a friendly NPC that has something they REALLY want. An anarchic wax golem wanting to overturn the power structures … but who is terrified of the consequences … or getting found out. Just about every creature in the “maze” a relationship, positive or negative, with at least one other entity. There is very little presumption of guilt or innocence in their descriptions. Just people, with people problems, who have wonderful things for you to steal, or problems and boons if you help them. While a lot of their goals intersect with the medusa, it is her pad after all and that’s why they are all there, it’s not a black and white situation. This extends to the medusa proper; she’s not necessarily evil. It’s not that simple In fact, she might be thought of as doing good, or, given your own proclivity for moral absolutism, maybe a corrupt cop. This NPC/monsters are truly one of the special parts of this adventure. The factions, the possibilities, it’s wonderful. Time and time again there could have been the temptation to tell us about these creatures. It’s evil. It’s frightful, etc. But they don’t do this. Instead they SHOW why the creature is horrid, or a moral, or super-intelligent. You the DM, and implicitly the players are left to draw their own conclusions and make their own judgements.

The map in this adventure is quite interesting, in the way the Stonehell maps were., from a functionality standpoint. A full page map shows a color inset of the rooms about to be described, along with a picture in each room that acts as a reminder as to what the encounter is. It’s also got a nice sentence in the room on the map that describes the encounter. “Divided monster” or “indecisive devil” or “fountain with trapped elemental.” This section, without the notes, is based on the original work of art Zak produced that the adventure then flowed from. The surrounding rooms, with their room numbers, are also shown along with their room number, albeit in a subdued grey. This gives you the context of what’s nearby. The facing page shows another version of the map section in question, closer to what one would expect a traditional supplement map to look like, along with a small inset showing this section relation to the greater section it’s a part of, and where it fits in the entire maze/dungeon. (Zones, with themes! A megadungeon requirement to be sure!) This same page has the one or two sentence summary of what the room is, along with a hyperlink to the full romo description. As I mentioned, earlier, this format is quite functional and essentially shortcuts the note taking and highlighting that marks most adventure prep. I’m hesitant to use the word “perfect”, but the format is pretty damn spot on for running a megadungeon, expanding and improving on what the one-age dungeons do, and on what Stonehell then expanded upon.

Let’s finish up with the PhaT L00T. We’ve all seen adventures with +1 swords and potions of healing. Not so here! The best way to describe it is that many objects in the adventure can do things. Some of those things are swords & armor. Others vary wildly. The shield Rex Absentia, bears a fierce heraldic lion. It only provides a bonus if you run away, and then the first attack on you misses. Looking closely, the lion on shield is actually waving goodbye. That’s great! Interesting, detailed but not overly so, an effect that’s not just a mechanical +1! That’s a pretty perfect magic item in Brycelandia. How about a sword that turns blood into wine? Or one that transfers thoughts between any plant creature cut? (Rest assured, there are LOTS of plants in the maze.) Magic that’s actually wondrous and magical! Imagine that! Beyond the ‘typical’ objects there are hosts of others. The Tears of Time can undo one event, with a chance of failure/disaster equal to the number of syllables in the request. Mechanically brilliant AND mythic. A wrench that makes machinery breakdown? A bag of gremlins. An oil that corrodes moving parts? A book called “Moving on with your life” that will end a negative effect suffered from the undead? The place is teeming with non-standard items and things the tears, objects that can be “reused” for effect. These are the sorts of things that Rulings not Rules revolve around. How can the characters exploit what they’ve found an/or their environment? It’s this type of play that ENGAGES the players. It’s this type of play that I luv Luv LUV.

Each element of Maze of the Blue Medusa is near perfect. And I dare hazard to say that the entire thing is greater still than the sum of its parts. One could quibble with a stinker here or there, like the giant snail encounter that seems more static than other encounters, but given the overall quantity of the quality that would be the epitome of gauche. There are a handful of products that rank among the best. Choosing among the best is hard. It would be foolish to ask “What is the best painting?” Zak and Patrick are both very creative and produce creative work outside the bounds of traditional RPG channels. Zak, in particular, is quite vocal about the DIY community. The best content in the last few years is coming out of the DIY community. This work is no journeyman’s. It’s result of two DIY masters coming together and collaborating on something blindingly brilliant. I’m struggling here. I’ve been fighting myself for hours. I’m fighting against saying this is the best thing ever produced. I’m suspicious of absolutist statements. I’m suspicious of my own feelings and in the dangers of conflating preference with best, and with the confusing addition of nostalgia to the mix.

Maze of the Blue Medusa is in some higher tier than The Best. I love the gonzo of ASE1. The love the vision of Deep Carbon Observatory. I love the childlike wonder of The Darkness Beneath: The Upper Caves. Maze of the Blue Medusa is right up there with those four products. It’s not just good. It’s doesn’t just rank with the best. It ranks with that very smaller group of three adventures that I love. It ranks with those adventures that are not just the best but with that small handful that tower over the rest of the field known as The Best. And so three becomes four. Team Lead? First among equals? The best? I don’t know. Best to not think of artificial labels Bryce. Of the over one-thousand adventures I’ve reviewed this is the best. And because I’m a weasel and hypocrite I’ll say it’s tied for best with those other three.

The PDF is $5. It’s got some hyperlinks in it. A more hyper-linked version is coming out soon. There’s a print book on the way which, I believe, is claimed will drool-worthy gorgeous. I can believe it. The preview can give you a good overview of the style of the product, the map layouts and “DM Notes” I referenced earlier, and so on. I believe it’s the first eighteen rooms. I’m not sure that’s the section I would choose. The first room, in particular, is one of the more challenging of the text. It could also be the case but the first room also faces the challenge of getting you oriented to the text/layout style and that the later rooms are easier to pick up because you are already oriented to the text. The escher stairs, the shadow pits, Lady Nine Bones and most of the NPC’s are, I think a little more representative of the work as a whole than that first room, in terms of ease of comprehension. I love the first room, it’s just not the easiest to grok.

You can find a preview at the publisher, Satyr Press: http://satyr.press/motbm-teaser.pdf

Oh, did I mention that one of the wanderers are the Chameleon Women? And they are armed with machetes? If I were a murder hobo and I ran in to a group of women armed with machetes in a dungeon I think I’d pee myself a little.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/195785/Maze-of-the-Blue-Medusa-o-Deluxe-PDF?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 4, Reviews, The Best | 23 Comments

Dungeon Magazine #78

Posted on April 16, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d78
Oh god. Do you know how to tell when you’re about to have a bad day? When the cover of Dungeon Magazine proclaims “Shakespearean Giants!”

Lear the Giant-King
By Mike Selinker
AD&D
Levels 6-9

Ok, ok. It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be. It’s King Lear. It’s got a weird mix of abstraction and keyed entries. It’s scene based, which is never a good sign. A fight scene with 5 giants is weirdly detailed but the camp of 95 giants is almost completely abstracted. (but, hey, 95 giants! That’s a cool encounter!) Similarly the sons of Gloucester are essentially abstracted into two encounters, while Lear’s evil offspring get some bit of encounter/key presentation. It’s thick and dense writing, with a lot to convey and even more prep work for the DM, especially when it comes to the jester. I’m not sure it’s runnable in any decent form without ten or so hours of prep. It’s one of the better Shakespeare adaptations in Dungeon … but a ten hour prep is not what I’m looking for in an adventure. As a bit of advice … if your NPC requires two columns of text to describe how to run then the something is wrong.

Veiled Threats
By Peter R. Hopkins
AD&D
Levels 4-6

Oh man … a side trek. Four pages. While in the baron’s throne room an old woman enters. For some reason the party doesn’t kill her immediately. Let’s see … using a scroll the baddie cast Veil on himself and his followers. And a delude spell. And a stoneskin spell on himself and his followers. And strength spells on his main followers. Wait!! Wait! It’s better! One of them has a spring loaded thing on his arm so his wand of polymorph shoots into his hand, all Wild Wild West style. And another one throws glass vials full of green slime. Someone else has a wand loaned to her by the baddie. I’m sure it’s obvious I loathe this shit. No doubt these are Peter’s pet NPC’s and/or stand-ins for himself in his game. This reliance on .. contrivance? To create content perfectly illustrates the decline of D&D. If the elf shot green slime rays from his eyes I’d have absolutely no problem with it. It’s the need to EXPLAIN and to hamper the DM with the rules that I find … detestable. Every rule ever created for D&D is for the players. Imagine there are 1 billion schools of magic, each as different from each other, and from the magic system presented in the books, as plasma is from human baby. That’s the relationship between Da Rules and the DM. PC’s memorize and cast spells. NPC’s shoot green slime rays.

Peer Amid the Waters
by Johnathan M. Richards
AD&D
Levels 1-2

WoW! This is a good adventure! And I don’t even mean it on the “by Dungeon Magazine standards” grading curve! It’s actually good! I’m serious! Ready? I’m totally serious here, it’s good EVEN CONSIDERING WHAT I AM ABOUT TO WRITE. First, keep in mind it’s for level 1’s. And has what feels like an endless and boring backstory. And a hook that feels like it’s about 10 pages long … all to keep the party from killing some asshat nixies. And then consider it’s underwater. And has two mummies. (got magic weapons?) And an undead leopard. (more magic weapons needed!) And all of the room descriptions are like half a page long and full of shit no one cares about. AND ITS GOOD! I know! Level 1? Underwater? Ha! A million loaned things for the arty, right? Right? No! Nixie kisses! It’s wonderful! All is right in the world, it fits perfectly! And an egyptian tomb to explore? (a teleport circle opened a portal underwater to the tomb.) Lame … except … it’s an alien environment,, and totally bizarre to find out of nowhere! Mystery! Wonder! And combined with the already alien environment of underwater, it works great! And the DM Torture Porn of Underwater Adventuring is toned down to be just the good parts that are fun and enhance the adventure! How is that? Light sources halved … so the descriptions play on that … shadows and chaos suddenly appearing in your (very) restrictive magic 10’ light circle! And not immediately attacking you! Lungs full of water and can’t cast? How about an air pocket under an overturned boat? Or a glob of air stuck to a diving beetle? Perfect! Mummies? That’s easy! The folks who you are in search of almost killed it AND it’s got a CLEARLY magic sword sticking out of its back while it’s engaged in a fight with the diving beetle! The undead kitty is torn between protecting the tomb and curling up n a ball every round, because it’s a cat in water! Treasure chamber problems? The party has enough time to grab some loot before the teleport circle starts to disappear! This things MASTERFUL in it’s design It exploits the FUN inherent in the situations. I LOVE it when I expect something to suck ass and it turns out wonderful! WAAAYYYYYYY too much text in this, but fuck it. Get a highlighter and go to town! All Hail Discordia!

Unexpected Guests
By Jeffrey P Carpenter
AD&D
Levels 4-6

A good concept, ruined. The party find a magic bag that turns out to be a mashup between a bag of holding and a instant fortress: a little home inside of a bag that you can climb in to. Pretty cool! And then the three derro trapped inside attack. That’s all Derro EVERY do in D&D: attack. Sometimes I feel like there was a special monster manual that only had derro in it and that a significant number of Dungeon Magazine contributors only had access to that one MM. No, they are not thankful or grateful for being released. I would be. Demons, djinni’s and derro are NEVER thankful for being released. That sucks. Having an evil buddy could provide LOADS of fun roleplay. Think how many great things could have been in that bag … instead of three derro who instantly attack. Lame.

Trial of the Frog
By Tito Leati
AD&D
Levels 3-4

A frog-man wants your help to get through a doorway. It’s a three room cave with a duergar and some skeletons. The grippli is very charming and has a nice story; it should have been presented as NPC data though instead of a giant monologue. It’s a nice non-human motivation with enough relatable content for the players to want to help.Otherwise, quite short.

The WInter Tapestry
By Stephen C. Klauk
AD&D
Levels 5-8

This is a brief overland journey and then an assault on a white dragon’s lair on an island in a sea of ice. Except the dragons dead and a frost giant family has moved in. The overland coomes form a map the characters get on a tapestry, showing the way to the dragon’s lair. Nice little town bit, nice little features on the (very brief) overland. It’s almost abstracted … especially compared to the description length on the island. The island has a nice map and the concepts in it are quite nice, but the length of the rooms changes dramatically to be quite long. Paragraphs to describe each trap, lots and lots of room decor information, and so on. Which is too bad because as a kind of “fully realized front giant home”, on an island, it’s actually pretty nice.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 7 Comments

The Curse of Cragbridge

Posted on April 13, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

ccbr
By Paul Wolfe
Mystic Bull Games
S&W
Levels 1-3

Prison of Spirits Betrayed! For five hundred years, Cragbridge has stood abandoned and cursed. Within lurk the haunts and spirits of those that served Lord and Lady Etheril. Some of these ghosts inhabit the forms of strange insectile humanoids while others guard tombs deep beneath the shattered bridge tower Recently, the good knight Sir Dougal Skavok disappeared in the ruin, and when a search party returned, they twoo were missing a few members. But they carried strange treasures found there: coins marked with a double-headed raven, gemstones of great value and other ornate and gilded items.They also spoke of the evils that lurked there, cursed forever by the vengeful Lady Etheril.

This is a interesting dungeoncrawl, with S&W, LabLord, and DCC versions available. An accursed gatehouse sits on the top edge of a river canyon. Inside are three upper levels in a tower and three dungeon levels, with about fifty rooms laid out over forty pages in a large font single column format. The S&W & DCC “original content” vibe is strong with this one, with all new monsters and almost all new magic items and some nicely homebrewed weirdness going on inside. The … gentle originality and weirdness? Of the dungeon reminds me of my favorite adventure of all time. Make no mistake though, this is a TOUGH dungeon for adventurers.

The backstory is about half a page and contains both the known/rumored history as well as the DM notes on what the truth is. Given the large font and single column layout this is about the right length. Not too long, a little bit to work with to feed the party data, and then it moves on. A brief area overview follows along with monster descriptions and the like, and then the keyed entries start. This amounts to a short and focused intro, conveying the information the DM needs in a way that supports their use of it during play. Rumors of former parties, pointers to who they were, just enough to poke the DM in the right direction and let them fill in the rest. A perfect outline … even if it is in paragraph form!

The rooms are pretty minimal, the way rooms should be. “The rotting corpse of a man clad in chain armor lies in the corner.” Doors are flimsy and rotten or strong and ironbound. Rooms are packed to the ceiling with swollen rotten barrels barely containing the organic slurry within. A pipe is clogged with rotting food, wood, and corpses. A room is crowded with lichen and creatures crouch in dank rooms. There are things to look at. There are things to fuck with. There is the 2+2 history of the place to put together and alters to defile or clean. This is the strength of the adventure. The rooms descriptions are generally no longer than they need to be. The rooms are generally active places, described in ways that are evocative and terse. They have things in them that the party can interact with (if only to investigate or loot.) It’s not quite a home run but it is very very good, in a journeyman sort of way. The rooms don’t feel like set pieces but they do feel interesting and even the empty ones, with one line descriptions, make you want to know more and poke about.

The monsters here are wonderful. They fully embrace a non-standard vibe and fit in well with the “cursed keep” vibe thing that the adventure has going on. Weird mutant hybrids, with larval form that crawl back to respawn anew once you kill them … along with weird little humanoid creatures that skitter about. The crawl on ceilings and walls, squeeze through cracks. There’s just enough horror in them to impart that part of the cursed history. No giant rats or stirge in this adventure, and I love the air of mystery and excitement and anticipation that brings to the players.

It does a great job also in providing monster drawings and maps at the end of the adventure. Printing these out and using them, either the maps for the DM or the creature illustrations to show the players, is a great thing for the adventure to provide the DM. It shows an understanding of how the product will be used in actual play and how to support the DM in that. It’s a nice touch.

I have a couple of criticisms. I’m not sure how valid they are. They FEEL like problems, but I think i’m also being a bit nitpicky here.

The map feels a little small … or maybe constrained is the word? It feels tight for the quantity of monsters present. I’m generalizing, but the levels FEEL like they all have one large room with other rooms hanging off of it. Thus the point of tactics is to always retreat backwards the way you came. The only real third dimension present is the collapsed roof of the tower and, maybe, secret doors in the floors. I appreciate both of those but they do tend to reinforce the constraining view of the dungeon. That’s not always bad, but I’m unsure how it works with the large number of monsters, some of which are quite tough, with the flimsy S&W Level 1 characters.

The treasure feels a little light, also, especially at the upper levels. Those have been explored and thus there’s a reason … but sometimes a party can lose heart if not given the occasional cookie. I was more than a little surprised that the big upper level boss monster, at 6HD with some killer attacks, only had 800gp. (Plus, some eggs, so there’s some fudge factor in those.)

The large font and single column layout also makes things feels a bit … hard to use? Actually, let me back that up. The weirdness in the format was in the wandering monster section. The table have seven entries and awkwardly takes up about a third of the page. Then the monster entries from the table are listed. In essence, all of the monsters from the adventure are placed in the middle of the adventure. This seems really weird and I suspect is a main during play. Moving them to the rear (easier to find) would help with this. Other than this one slight formatting/layout issue, the larger single column format isn’t really a hinderance at all. It certainly makes the product longer, from a page count standpoint, but it’s also pretty easy to find things.

Let’s be clear: I really like adventure this and I’m keeping it. I WANT it to be as good as my favorite adventure. It might be. Something is keeping me from saying it is. I think maybe what’s keeping me from doing so is personal taste. I’m a bit more inclined to fanciful folklore and this leans more towards a tragic event and curse. This is a very strong adventure though and I would not hesitate to recommend it.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/170874/The-Curse-of-Cragbridge–Swords–Wizardry-Version?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | 6 Comments

The Horror at Hill Stead

Posted on April 11, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

Destination Unknown – Life is so strange

By RC Pinnell
Mavfire Games
OD&D
Levels 4-8

This is an homage to G1, but this time with ogres and a hardcore devotion to the original 3 book version of D&D. No retroclones here! “It is assumed you have it or will very quickly obtain it.” This is an assault on an ogre fort that looks a lot like the steading in G1, but a bit smaller. It get inspiration from some of the encounters as well, from the feast to the infamous watchtower room 1. The writing style is remarkably close and at times you could be forgiven to think you were actually reading G1. Very close … but not the same. This has a more conversational style and more direct statements to the DM. I wonder sometimes about these sorts of products. Is it actually an art project, or something like required homework? Taking G1 writing something so close to it, but for OD&D … why? “Because I want to” is a perfectly valid answer … but still leaves the question in a state that makes me uneasy. If the goal was to produce a work that could be mistaken for having been produced in 1975 by TSR then it succeeds greatly … but that would then put it solidly in the Art Project category, like Habitation of the Stone Giant Lord.

I mentioned a more conversational style and a devotion to OD&D. A lot of that is front loaded. The entire adventure is about ten pages long with the fort having about 35 rooms and the last page being devoted to the wilderness map and pregens. That leaves almost four pages of lead in. This is predominantly wilderness information and wandering monster tables, along with lengthy … commentary? I want to say advice, but it’s so generic that it’s more like someone who REALLY loves OD&D commenting on specific aspects of the game.

“Lastly, it is not cheating, nor coddling the characters, to provide them–even at these levels– with some minor magical assistance. One potion of healing per character, supplied by the local temple, or a minor scroll of magic (containing a Magic Missile Spell) from a local NPC — perhaps for a share of the booty recovered by the group–would be within reason, and might contribute to the interaction between the the characters and the residents of the town in which you plan to begin the adventure.”

The cadence there, the style, is unmistakingly in the voice of G1. And takes forever to get to the point. There’s quite a bit more of even more general advice: characters with low ability scores tend to die in dungeon. Games die from a bad streak of luck. It’s not quite “let me tell you about my campaign” but more “let me tell you about generic truths from RPG’s.” Combine this with some notes about where to find things in the books (Greyhawk, no stats for dire wolves appear, You may Use Supplement 1 for STR and DEX bonuses. Feel free to not roll for wandering monsters if that is your wish) and you get some lengthy commentary gumming up the works. The whole” find a resting cave” thing from G1 is present, as well as the advice on the difficulty of burning down the fort. The wanderers are just beasts and too much time/space seems to be given over to the wilderness sections for what is presented. IE: “wander through the woods and through the hills.” Is about the extent of it.

The main encounters section is pretty directly inspired by G1. A feast hall with lots of folks in it. A watchtower with someone asleep. Dire wolves. Matron cooks. Visitors present (hill giants and a stone giant.) There are little tweaks here and there. A second floor to the feast hall balcony. A doggy door in the kitchen for the wolves. No lothario but the chutzpah kids are present.

Like G1 there is a verbose tersity, if that sort of thing is possible. The creative content is nice, from a mundane monster fort sort of viewpoint, but then it tarries. “A small hidden door in the back of the north shelf (see map) allows passage to a secret hallway beyond. It’s more focused than most modern adventures, avoiding for the most part lengthy mundane descriptions that add little … but then it adds the commentary of description of where the secret door is (It’s on the map.) Or what to roll to find a secret door. (Repeating what’s in the rules for such.) In the end it manages six of seven encounters per page.

The treasure here is generic and mostly uninteresting, as it was in G1. The exception are (mostly) the cursed magic items. Not just a Ring of Delusion but one that makes you think CP is SP and SP is GP. That’s quite nice, as are the variety of cursed swords. The rest is almost abstracted: a gem worth 1000gp. Three jewelry worth 500gp each. The treasure was not one of G1’s strong points.

I’m at a loss where this fits. G1 for people who want a thoroughly researched/converted/inspired version to run with OD&D? There are some bits of background, quite brief, about a ruined and desolated village and it’s downfall that are quite nice: evocative and terse, but otherwise there’s not much new to point to here.

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Dungeon Magazine #77

Posted on April 9, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d77
This issue isn’t too bad. Except for the feature.

Visiting Tylwyth
By Scott Walley
AD&D
Level 1

Following a trail in a forest to find a missing elf. I’d call this charming and playful, if conversational and an abundance of text. It pays special attention to gnomes and their ability to speak with burrowing creatures. It’s quite specific in it’s detail of certain object, which adds a lot to the adventure. It pays too much attention to mechanics and uses several sentences where one would do, which clogs it all up with text. Creepy carving in the forest, a nicely described elf tree home (maybe the best I’ve seen), and some kobolds round out an encounter with a misanthrope. This is pretty low key but fanciful, which is how I like my folklorish adventures at first level. A powerful earthen odor with dangling roots draping an entrance? Nice! A great selection of reward items also, from folding boats to expanding 10’ poles, to oversized pipes.

A Feast of Flesh
By Peter R. Hopkins
AD&D
Level 3-5

“Buggems! No!” BUGGEMS! NO!”

A side-trek in a small village that is being surrounded/infested with giant burrowing beetles. This has a nice Tremors vibe going on with decent atmosphere that reminds me a lot of the scenes where they are trapped in a building, but this time it’s the entire village. Four pages and PACKED with more content than usual for a side-trek. The burrows/warren under the village are repetitive and don’t live up to the content in the village. Replacing it with one of those freaky “Living Plaque” adventures from Psychedelic Fantasies would be pretty cool. Very nice little map of the village and the warrens underneath. This could use a few events to liven things up in the village

Wind Chill
By Kevin Carter
AD&D
Levels 4-6

This five page adventure is not a side-trek, but has significantly less content than the Tremors sidetrek in this issue. While camping in the snow, they party is tormented by a windigo. The abandoned campsite they discover is detailed at length, as are the four time-based events that follow. It’s all the wendigo screwing with the party. I suppose it’s meant to build tension, and I think it would do so pretty well. It is, essentially, an at length description of “surviving the night” while camped, something parties do often. “A half-hour of deathly silence settles on to the forest after the last bone falls.” That’s pretty good. The read aloud (the previous was a DM note) isn’t quite that good, but isn’t bad at all. The all too frequent “ruined by too much DM text” is rampant here, and detracts from the usefulness.

Ex Keraptis Cum Amore
By Andy Miller
AD&D
Levels 8-12

This is another White Plume Mountain, complete with some pictures to show players. . Enchantments have been placed on the dungeon that thwart any spell that transports something from one place to another, and any spell used in any way has a 25% chance of fizzling out. Joy. I’m not a fan of these; there ought to be a warning label so you know you are about to buy one. It’s serviceable for what it does, accomplishing the room-after-room challenge that these things must deliver, supported by some of the player handouts. Two paragraph read-alouds required to fortell the doom and puzzle to the players, followed by two columns of text per room to describe the DM notes and advice. How it’s actually possible to run something like this (specifically, digging through 2 columns of DM text) is beyond me.

Stage Fright
By Oliver Garbsch
AD&D
Levels 1-3

Side-trek. A page of backstory. A read aloud monologue more than a column long. A baby slaad rips out of the chest of an actor on stage and runs into the basement. Kill it before it becomes a young slaad. The Tremors adventure could be better, but compared to the usual side-trek dreck, like this thing, it’s magnificent.

To Walk Beneath the Waves
By W. Jason Peck
AD&D
Levels 3-5

“The First Councilor is direct.” Quotes the adventure. Unlike the adventure proper, which takes forever to go nowhere. Just a few combats in this overly long adventure under the sea to find some underwater raiders. It wants to provide a magical and wondrous adventure in a strange and alien world under the sea. All it actually does is provide boring combat after combat. As with all crappy underwater adventures, it provides the party with gear to survive. Notably though, the designer references the dilemma directly in the second paragraph of the adventure: “they should possess very few if any magical items that help them deal with the undersea element. [items are provided] and by limiting the amount of such magic the DM enhances the sense of mystery and wonder inherent to this environment.” True. But the environment presented isn’t magical and wonderous, it’s boring and dull. And giving the party items deadens their own buy into the adventure. “Hey go do this mission in the magma! Don’t worry, here’s a 200 billion dollars worth of solid diamond stuff to survive it!”

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 1 Comment

KS1 – Tower of Skulls

Posted on April 6, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

ts
By Dave Olson
Cut to the Chase Games
Swords & Wizardry/Pathfinder/5E/Savage
Levels 10-12

Death and darkness has risen from churned black soil! A festering evil returns to the land, spreading a palpable fear to all in its area. A brave band of heroes are needed to seek out the site and cleanse it once and for all. But be wary! Brave heroes have fallen victim to the traps and dangers contained within the legendary … TOWER OF SKULLS!

This adventure is a series of linear set-piece encounters in a tower housing an imprisoned demon lord. Book magic items, gimping the cleric, long room descriptions (remember, they are all set pieces!).

Oh god I loathe shit like this. I was looking forward to seeing a high level swords & wizardry adventure. A feeling of dread came over me when I read the last sentence of the background: “So he has turned his former power base into a death trap for the unwary, cackling away at the mortals who blunder in to find naught but their doom.“ I know what that means. It’s the code words that mean stupid set piece challenges in a Tomb of Horrors like environment. All I see is a lack of imagination, or, maybe, extremely constrained imagination. The ability to write a set pieces is, I guess, some kind of talent, but the inability to link them together in anything other than a linear adventure is a significant gap. I always feel ripped off in cases like this and I’ve struggled greatly to make sense of those feelings. This doesn’t fit any definition of what a S&W adventures is, for me. Sure, it’s stat’d that way, but is that enough? I’m guessing that the answer is that it’s just a BAD Swords & Wizardry adventure, and it’s unfair of me to call it not even a S&W adventure. But it is SO bad, misunderstanding what the the system is and about, that it makes me want to place product like this in another category altogether. “New! Call of Cthulhu adventure!” Maybe it is stat’d that way, but if it’s nothing more than 12 combats,all in a row, with nothing in between, between the characters and CoC monsters? I’d say the designer just doesn’t get what CoC is.

Demon lord chuck challenges Orcus, loses, gets imprisoned in this tower which Orcus chucks in to the Prime Material plane. He’s converted it into some deathtrap “challenge” dungeon and now it appears during the full moon at random places. There’s actually a couple of nice things in the introduction. Separate sections for Sage information and Legend Lore are nice; these should be standard operating procedures for any high level S&W character: getting a leg up any way they can before they actually get near the dungeon. Likewise there’s a section on portents of doom that precede the towers arrival. Birds flees the tower area 6-7 days in advance of its appearance, and great squirming masses of earthworms appear. There’s a few other examples of things like this, including a skull that burns with black flames and has eyes that light up in the direction of the tower. Very nice little additions to get the party moving in the right direction and add a touch of dread and fun to the adventure. That’s great content.

I won’t be saying anything nice again.

The tower has undead in it. Level 10-12 clerics laugh at undead, so turn undead doesn’t work in the tower. I’m not cool with this. I don’t like it when the players powers are gimped arbitrarily by the DM. The cleric worked hard to get to level ten. Stripping them of their turn powers removes a significant ability. The wizard can’t cast spells and the fighter can’t swing a weapon? That’s not something anyone would do, would they? And yet adventure after adventure does this to the cleric. It’s like there’s some sort of mental block when it comes to undead. The designer wants to put in undead. The cleric is a problem. The solution is to gimp the cleric. A better designer would turn to other solutions. Like not including undead. Or putting in more powerful undead. Or increasing their number.

On a somewhat related note: the goal is to reach the top levels wherein resides whatever the players are looking for in the tower. You can’t leave the tower except through the top floor or through a special room on each level that takes 50% of your magic items and teleports you d% miles away. And you can’t rest in the tower, except for the one hour in those special portal rooms. It’s clearly written to gimp the players and control resting, forcing them to confront set piece after set piece in an artificial way. Short rest. I don’t think I recall that mechanic in S&W … hmmm, 5e perhaps? Let’s be clear, even if I were reviewing a 5e adventure I’d hate this thing, it’s just a poor adventure overall and the imperfect conversion just shows the lack of experience with S&W. Also, if I were playing this, I’d go to the roof and use any of a variety of wizard spells to drop in through the roof. Just saying.

Having put this off as much as possible, I must now address the 51 set piece encounters. 51-5 that is, recall there’s one “Room of Respite” on each level. Enter room. See something. Take an action. Monster shows up. Defeating monster allows an exit to show up. Go to next room. Repeat. The door opens when the monster appears. The door open when the monster is killed. The door opens when you remove all the candles. The door open when you burn up an item. The door opens when you answer a riddle. The door opens when the trap triggers. You get the idea. You encounter the room and then you are allowed to go to the next one. The set pieces are not the set pieces of an Indiana Jones film. Grand environments with lots going on that the party can use for creative purposes. That’s not this. These are extremely constrained environments, the only features present are the pits and traps the monsters pull you into. These are the worst sorts of encounters in any D&D game. A forced combat, the deck stacked unnaturally in the favor the DM. Roll the dice. Depend on luck. Go to the next one. The dreariness of round after round of mini’s combat. From this standpoint even the Battle Interactive at DDXP offers more interesting environments to adventure in. A not insignificant effort is made to describe each environment a bit. A titanic mushroom. An obsidian step pyramid. Great cages. Hanging vines. But each one feels like those final rooms in the demonweb in Q1. The purpose of the room is to have a fight. The purpose of the read-aloud is to describe the set pieces. And then there’s a column of text after that to go into detail on the description and monster tactics and so on. Described as a tower, it’s actually a ring of rooms with an additional room in the middle. One entry door and one exit door, and sometimes a third to the central room. This repeats level after levels, for all four of the “challenge” levels.

The reward for all of this … +2 longsword. +2 ring of protection. And so on. And so forth. Wand of fear. Ring mail +3. Book item after book item. No imagination and no creativity in in the description. Just the name “Ring Mail +3.” The fabulous treasure room in which all of those “leaving the tower” magic items were teleported to? Totally abstracted, just like in Hoard of the Dragon Queen. “Piles of glittering coin and gemstones.” And “There should be enough to tempt the most equipped adventurer.” That’s it. Nothing more. That’s the extent of the creativity you paid for. S&W is a gold for xp system, iirc. But that’s all abstracted here. There’s little understanding of the game. It’s not5e. It’s not Pathfinder. It’s not Savage Worlds, with their combat based advancement for plot point based advancement.

I’m very disappointed in this. $6 at DriveThru … I’m really on the edge of giving this one of my coveted “Worst Adventures of All Time” checkboxes.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/178325/BF1-Tower-of-Skulls-SnW?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The Inadvertent Wizard

Posted on April 4, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

inadwiz
By Richard Kropp
Basic D&D, OSRIC, LL, etc
Self Published
Levels 4-5

A relaxing evening at the Virulent Flask leads to your next adventure when the locals take up a collection to hire some heroes. It seems an ugly beast with odd magical powers has been harassing travelers and they want the nuisance stopped.

This adventure revolves around a troll, his pet gar, and some accidental magic. It has a village, a small set-piece, and then a small cave complex. It seems to have a weird mix of village, set-piece, dungeon encounters that leaves me feeling it places emphasis in unusual areas of the adventure. It also has a strangely detached voice in the read aloud, and is need of some interesting content/language, especially in the dungeon. All is not lost though, the village life section is rather solid, and the thing is generally organized quite well. However, creativity always trumps organization.

Two pages of backstory tell us about the trolls history and justify the presence of the gar as his pet as well as his ability to cast magic. I’m not sure I’m down with that. It’s certainly not needed. There’s no real reason to need the backstory. I’ve lightened my position on this recently, as well as, maybe, my position on shitty fiction in adventures. (And to be clear: all fiction in adventures is shitty.) There is no fiction in this, but the backstory remains. My wife noted to me the lengthy backstories that plague adventures are only really a problem when they get in the way of the adventure. As long as we don’t HAVE to read the 12 page backstory in order to run the adventure then it doesn’t impact the my ability to run it, and some people find it interesting and get inspiration from it. In this limited case I can agree with her. As long as I don’t have to read your backstory then it’s cool from now on. Which reminds me, I need to change my review standards. But, still, in this one the backstory seems to exist to justify the troll being able to do what he can do. And that tweaks me the wrong way. The reason, for the DM, is always “Because D&D”, and nothing else is needed for the DM. For the players, no explanation is ever necessary, mystery should be part & parcel. Ok, I’ve now beaten to death, out of proportion, an innocent little backstory. Joy.

The hook is about a page long. While at a tavern the barkeep comes around, taking up a collection to hire someone to solve some disappearances. Two others in the bar take him up on it, and spook the PC’s horses for good measure, just to be sure they are the only ones able to proceed. I like a good rival mercenary company, livens things up. It takes about a page to go over this hook, which seems long to me. There’s far too much “if they do x then Y happens” type of stuff. A brief list of the facts and other salient points would have been much better. It’s this sort of thing that will happen over and over again in this adventure: some nice little setup and too many words that add little to the first bit of awesome.

The read-aloud in this adventure has a strange voice. “An overly concerned citizen grebs ones of the PC’s and demands to know if they are going to do something about ‘the beast’.” See, it’s all written in this strangely distance voice that makes little sense in read-aloud. I’ve noticed this in a few adventures recently. The read-aloud is summary information, and non-specific. It’s a weird trend and it dies. Here’s another example. “A nervous citizen walking by.” It’s almost as if these were the designers notes and they meant to fill them in more later. The adventure also has one of the generic rumor tables that I dislike. I like my rumors to come with a voice, but these are the usual boring fact based things. “The beast is a large fish, 20’ long, with a long snout and razor-sharp teeth.” Fact based. Voice based would have this in the voice of a fisherman, telling about how it bit clean through his boat like it was butter.

What’s a little frustrating is that some of the encounters in town are genuinely interesting. The overly concerned citizen is a great idea, it’s just implemented poorly. Likewise armed woodcutters, the BBQ stirge on a stick at the bar, the woodcutters union, the slick used-rowboat salesman, and the asshat in the trading post. The town wanderers and sites are all pretty good actually, with a nice originality to them. They do tend to run to the long/wordy side of things, but, again, creativity trumps. The trading post guy has lost 14 consecutive elections for mayor? NICE!

The wandering monster encounters are plagued with the same weirdly distant read-aloud, and don’t really have much going for them. River pirates on pole barges and grumpy fishermen are nice, but don’t really have the flavor of the town encounters and the rest of the encounters don’t even have that going for them. “A PC has leaned over their boat too far to look at a cute baby crab playing with a fallen leaf n the water surface – and has fallen in.” Again, weird. Nice little detail, I like it, but weirdly worded/perspective in the read-aloud.

The twelve or so dungeon encounters are accompanied by a few wandering monsters descriptions. Both have the same sort of problem: all of that originality from the village is gone. In it’s place is just mande encounters with mundane text to go with it.

2. Underground beach
“This cavern floor consist of a mix of sand and dried mud, creating a sort of underground beach.” There is a sloping tunnel rising up into area #4.

It’s nicely terse, but not really interesting and doesn’t really add anything to the adventure at all. The read aloud tries in place, with sunlight shining through a small hole in the ceiling to a stairs out made of cave formation, to little bits like paint on the floor (marking safe spots!) and other little clues. It’s all got a little bit of a generic feel though. I’m not even sure I can explain why. Perhaps the descriptions are trying to be evocative but need some work? And then DM advice following that adds a little too much detail? “The hole in the ceiling is their exit to go hunting outside.” That sacks of explaining and not of “detail that makes the adventure more fun.” Another example would be of the monsters actual lair room.

This musty cavern contains a bed of animal furs and a couple of short stalagmites against an outcropping along the eastern cavern wall.

It’s clearly trying to give some details (and is nicely terse!) but it’s not really that interesting or evocative.

The treasure is done B1 style, with a list the DM can then insert into each room as they see fit. The non-magical treasure tries a bit to add something. A copper bracelet with a jadestone, or a small music box with coins in it. Those could use a bit more specificity in them, but again an effort was clearly made. With one exception, the magic items are a disappoint, being only book items. +1 sword, +2 shield and the like. The single exception is a helmet the troll is wearing that lets it cast 1st level spells from scrolls. Again, no real description of it but he additional bit, beyond read languages, that allows you to cast a 1st level spell from a scroll is a nice little bit of bump that I can see causing covetous feelings in the party … and still not really unbalance things at all.

I picked this up at DriveThru

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/176865/The-Inadvertent-Wizard?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

DDAL4-1 Suits of the Mists.

Posted on April 3, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

ddal41
Welcome to The Sunday Suck! This occasional feature will review D&D Adventurers League scenarios. I promise to rename the series as soon as WOTC publishes a decent AL adventure. And if that takes too long I may lower my standard to “something that doesn’t suck.” Or “something that doesn’t completely suck.”

As you can see, I have hoped for the series.

By Shawn Merwin
WOTC
5E
Levels 1-2

Strange things are afoot in the Moonsea. The factions have called all those willing and able to investigate strange occurrences in the region surrounding Phlan. Dark whispers and unseen terrors lurk in the misty shadows between this world and someplace much more sinister. Unveil the horrors before it is too late! Part one of Misty Fortunes and Absent Hearts.

Five one to two hours that dump the party into Ravenloft at the end. Boring, mechanical, and suffering from the pedantic Adventurers League Overhead tax. Only an adventure if you consider five combats, one in each mini-”adventure” to be an adventure. It’s not. It’s an encounter. And a boring one at that.

Oh god. Six pages of logistics data before the adventure background. The general usefulness of data is suspect … at best. It’s all very simple advice like “read the adventure first” or the minutia of adventurers league mechanics. The seven pages of boilerplate will, I’m sure, show up in every AL adventure this season. Or past seasons. It makes reference to your faction raising you and so on … ignoring the fact that the party is dumped into Ravenloft and no faction support is available. (Ok, I’m supposing this is the case in future adventures. I could be wrong. But I’d guess not.) I wish they would yank all this shit and just put it in the DM’s guide for AL or maybe just cram it into a DM season guide. It just clogs up the thing and takes away from the better bits that are mixed in, the localization bits. There is an overview of the Ravenloft, and the highlight is one of the better parts of the CoS adventure: the cosmetic spell mods. Skeletal phantom steeds, alarm spells with piercing scream, and so on. The other really nice bit of this is in the spellcasting services. Mixed into the pedantic minutia is something interesting: Jeny Greenteeth is the only one available to cast spells for the party “back in town.” She’s a hag you meet. In any event, the adventure notes “This will no doubt lead to some uncomfortable situations and unforeseen consequences.” And Fun! Don’t forget fun! How bad you want that Remove Curse bucko?! Bwa hahahahaha! I love it. This entire thing needs more color and flavor like that and less generalisms.

The major flaw with the adventure is that it’s boring. It’s a boring adventure and it’s written in a boring fashion. There’s no joie de vivre in the thing. And I don’t mean Ravenloft Dread. I mean it’s all generically mechanical. The hook/backstory is two pages long and devoid of life. Nothing specific, just generalities. All abstracted. You get to an inn, the folks are upset. There are four DM bullet points about some stuff the romani, err, sorry, Gur, stole. Asking around gets the DM to give the players a handout. It has generic information about the four “normal” encounters. “A man in his 30’s named Bob was seen in the vicinity of the stables.” Can you see the abstraction here? No color. Just summary information. Pick something off of the list and your journey and follow up will be abstracted also. Until you reach the read-aloud, which triggers the encounter. The ability to role play or be creative is severely constrained here. There’s just very little to work with, either from an environmental standpoint or a “something other than a combat” standpoint.

The two most interesting of the five scenarios are the ones that break away. One is a meeting with the hag. The PC garbage that surrounds her is lame (“What to do if the party objects til killing an elk on moral grounds”) IE: the writer goes FAR out of his way to introduce an evil NPC and then back off to list multiple reason why to not kill her and to convince the party not to kill her. In this case the designer does a poor job of communicating danger to the level1/level2 party. Making her an old woman in a floral dress is fun with a stained him is fun … but it should have been accomplished while simultaneously communicating the danger she poses to the party if they fuck with her. IE: just go on the evil NPC’s fetch quest. (Which is a stupid “hunt” for elk, by which I mean a couple of lame paragraphs on running a combat with elk.) The other interesting scenario is in a fortress filled with evil humanoids. But they are all inside/asleep/down below and what you want is in the relatively unguarded courtyard. Drawbridge, an implied 2 levels (the fortress walls), a cart, rubble, trees, a cage. Making a goofy plan and watching it fall apart is a classic part of D&D and this encounter does that.

The encounters are better when they are more than just a forced combat and offer the party an environment they can breathe in and stretch themselves. And the text is at its best being it’s giving out those nice little flavorful tidbits. “Hush now dearie or I’ll carve out your eyes.” MOAR! More of that! Less pedantic DM advice. Less trying to give advice on every action the party could take. The railroads are lame as well. If the party manages to pick a fight and actually kill the hag then their victory will be taken away from them as she comes back. (At least that’s what’s implied.) That kind of shit needs to fucking stop. If they kill her then she’s dead. And no, they don’t get a replacement for her. No rez for you, you killed the spellcaster dipshits.

The maps are lame. And only the fortress one offers anything useful to the DM. The cave map may be the worst. Literally a small loop on a full page to represent the cave. Wow. That adds so much to the adventure! Each adventure also gets about a three page prologue, with a page of “story awards” and a page of monsters and then the lame ass map.

I heard a rumor that the designers of these AL adventures are now paid, and the speculation was that the quality would be higher. I don’t know what they were like before, but this one stinks. The designer needs to cut words and focus on specific bursts of flavor. “SHOW, don’t tell.” Is common advice … but this seems to reverse that with an almost unerring compulsion to “TELL not show.” Whoever oversaw this (the editors?) needed to go to town with “prune this” and “condense this” comments.

This is $3 at The DM’s Guild. I’d recommend you not buy it, but if you want to play AL then you have to.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/177576/DDAL401-Suits-of-the-Mists-5e?affiliate_id=1892600

Finally, to be petty, the “Suits” thing is never explained. Each adventure is themed for one of the five suits in the Ravenloft tarot, and has a brief section on it, but there’s no explanation of how it all ties together.

Posted in Adventurers League, Reviews | 3 Comments

Dungeon Magazine #76

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d76
Guess who doesn’t like enforced morality and railroads! That’s right! Me! I usually try to separate bad ideas and/or bad work from the people who created them. A person isn’t bad, they just did something ill-advised. I’m also a hypocrite.

It occurs to me that much was lost in OD&D between the resource-management of the early game and the plot from the later games. The “Detect Being Fucked With by the DM” spells made sense when you couldn’t refresh any spell at any time, didn’t have your books with you, couldn’t learn any spell at will, and had to manage your wizard slots more. As those limitations were houseruled away, or officially ruled away, the “Detect DM Bullshit” spells became adventure breakers when the entire adventure revolved around them. WOTC should have removed them from the modern era game, or at least publish “genre packs” of appropriateness.

The House on the Edge of Midnight
By Raymond E. Dyer
Ravenloft
Levels 4-6

The party washes ashore on a misty isle (Ravenloft!) and sees a mansion on the island. (I burn it down.) They are greeted by a distracted doctor. (I stab him in the face.) who offers you each a room for the night. (Uh, fuck you. No. We all sleep in the same room. Also, I kill the doctor.) Weird things happen. (Uh, I burned the house down, remember? I do it again.) Turns out the doctor is evil and salvaging body parts to repair his maimed daughter in the basement. Oh, and he killed the rest of the family and burned them in the wood stove that won’t open up and always billows out extremely stinky smoke. This is an event based adventure that is, essentially, a railroad from start to finish. You can’t open the stove until X happens. One must happen before two can happen. The doctor appears with the thing you need at a certain time. He regens completely until his appointed time to die. I get the tone the adventure is going after but it’s so ham-handed that it’s hard to see past that.

A Day at the Market
By Kevin Carter
AD&D
Levels 2-4

A side-trek. A grey ooze in the sewers eats a wand of wonder and summons a rhino before it wanders into the crowded marketplace. I like chaos. I wish there was more examples of chaos in the marketplace from the rhino and the ooze. There aren’t really any.

Mertymane’s Road
By Jason Poole, Craig Zipse
AD&D
Levels 5-7

This is a little wilderness jaunt through some snowy mountains and then an assault on an abandoned dwarf hall occupied by evil giants, humanoids, and humans from a neighboring kingdom. As usual, a big effect is made of the environment impacts of the snow & cold. I loathe these DM torture porn things. I’d rather the environment was used to make things awesome rather than to pedantically punish the players. The wilderness encounters are an ok ambush or to, and a nicely little “weird place” to rest at, along with slushmen (mudmen) who attack from residual magical runoff ponds. These are a very nice little place with the kind of mythic feel that I think we all yearn for from an ancient dwarf hall. The dwarf hall, proper, is small and cramped and feels like it’s just combat after combat.

Crusader
By Peter Lloyd-Lee
AD&D
Levels 3-6

Fuck. You. Peter. An old man has a heart attack in the street and if the party doesn’t respond then the adventure is over and DM forces an alignment check? You sound like a real fun guy to game with. He spends a long paragraph on punishing the party and then goes on to say that if the party do a RES on him he automatically fails it. Railroad much? Please forgive us lowly players of D&D who thought our characters had some semblance of free will. Please, Peter, allow us to play the game exactly the way you insist it played! There’s a dickish paladin involved, who can’t be bothered to walk across town to pick up his holy avenger. This then has the party going into the wizards home. IE: this is a puzzle adventure in a wizards house to complete a fetch quest. The reward is to get arrested by the town for entering the wizards home without permission. It’s just a wizards tower with a couple of puzzle rooms.

Earth Tones
By Craig Shackleton
AD&D
Levels 7-9

This is a combination of an event based adventure and a dungeon to explore, centered around an abandoned dwarf hold and the burrowing monsters attacking a nearby town. It is organized quite well: there’s a description of the key people in town and what they know/how they react, a list of events that can take place, and then a location list. The locations are very briefly described, except for the main abandoned dwarven hold. In short: it’s organized exactly the way it needs to be to support the type of play it wants to be … a quite rare event in the annals of adventure writing. The events are a bit … railroady. Nondetection spells and amulets to justify the choices made in the design, and it’s not until the sixth or eighth event that from free will emerges. Forced combat abound, with a lot of the events being “these things burrow up from underground and attack.” The NPC descriptions are about the right length for a DM to use, maybe just being a sentence or two longer than need be. The event text are a little longer still, but still probably manageable. The dwarf stronghold tends to the “at least two paragraphs per room” standard, which is overkill. I don’t know, hordes of invisible enemies (duergar) are always kind of a turnoff for me, although I do the visuals of duergar appearing as they fall from the ceiling and enlarging at the same time. The full-length paragraph monster stats as also a turnoff for me. All of the “interesting” bits seem to be set-piece combats … which I don’t find interesting when they make up the preponderance of encounters. “If the players are having an easy time ofit then make a third purple worm come up from underground.” Ug.

Fruit of the Vine
By Charles C. Reed
AD&D
Levels 2-4

This interesting little adventure takes place, mostly, in a little house with a mutant yellow vine creeper in it. Each room seems to have some little bit of interest in it, which is quite unusual for these sorts of things. The map is nicely three dimensional, at least more than others, and even has a old ladder outside for people to take advantage of. An open courtyard inside the building, a creeper vine under a table … Just a little bit of special in each room. It’s fairly short, at only six pages, and at least three of those is a bloated backstory and hook. If you could edit the hell out of ALL the extraneous text then you could get this down to 2 or three pages, easily, and have nice little compact adventure in a house in town with more than a little in it to interest a party of adventurers. An inkwell made out of a griffon hoof? Sign me up! I’m hesitant, but would say this is worth looking up even in it’s present condition.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 3 Comments