Dungeon Magazine #86

Posted on June 11, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d86
Anvil of Time
By Tracy Hickman
3e
Level 5

This Dragonlance adventure is a thirty or so room dungeon that is repeated three times, during three different ages. You get kidnapped in, muck about meeting famous people and collecting time travel gems/coordinates in the various ages, and then exit. I am … intrigued by the concept but loathe some of the choices made. The kidnapping/hook, in which the players are just teleported in, is just fucking lazy. “You’re in room 1 of the tomb of horrors and need to get to the end to get out. Go!” There’s also a good bit of “famous people in history” running about. Huma and a dragonlance and orb of dragonkind, Lord Soth, Fistandant … it seems like a weak excuse to name drop rather than something to advance the adventure. There is some lengthy read-aloud and in places even lengthier DM notes, usually describing some contraption in meticulous detail. There’s also some “The bowl is normal and the archway is not harmful” text, which is just bad editing, as is “the room is burned. There was a fire here in the past.”We don’t need to know about the past, even in the time travel adventure. The map could have been better, perhaps with some different colored notations, to note different creatures in different times. Some of the read-aloud and room descriptions make notes of sounds heard or have things in the room impacted by things the next room. These are nice touches that make the rooms seems more alive and help the DM run the adventure. I just can’t get over my distaste for the name dropping and teleport kidnapping hook.

Rana Mor
By Richard Baker
3e
Level 6

Meh. This is supposed to be a ruined temple in a jungle. It feels like a normal dungeon. There’s a journey up river with several forced combats and a couple of encounters that are trying to decent: an old hermit and a faux war party. The temple proper is about forty rooms. It’s got some undead priests, some living cannibal priests, and a couple of animal types that have wandered in. The room descriptions can be quite lengthy, as can the read-aloud, making it difficult to find things during play. Further, they are not very interesting. It just doesn’t feel very much like a jungle temple. The language is stilted and … remote? Cannibals, priests, undead priests a ruined jungle temple, that should be great. Instead it feels like just another dungeon.

Stormdancers
By Ole Munch
3e
Level 3

This is a short adventure through the woods, across a bridge, through a five room cave, up to the top of a mountain. All in a storm. The various encounters are not terrible, although there’s a bit of trap-weariness in the caves. A glass brigde, in a storm, with a couple of mephits harrying the party. A stone circle with air elementals dancing and then, of course, the monster/trap zoo in the wizard caves. The rooms descriptions are VERY lengthy, with every trap getting a long paragraph, explaining too much, and everything seemingly getting a description and background that is not needed. This could have been as a 1-pager or 1 sheet adventure. As a longer adventure it’s torturous to use.

Mysterious Ways
By Thomas Harlan
3e
Level 7

A D&D adventure in the Holy Land during the crusades, for level 7 characters. Did I miss a source book? This seems more than a little idiosyncratic. The long monologue says that a part of the true cross has been stolen. Tracking the hospitaliers to Masada leads to saracen lands, and then to Petra to face the final enemy. Long read-alouds in monologues form at the start of the two halves of the adventure. A lot of DM text telling you the historical significance of an area and/or what happened there in the past. Really nothing more than a couple of fights, with little text to support the DM run an evocative/living environment. 🙁

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The Fungus Forest

Posted on June 8, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

fungfor
By Carl Nash & Lee Reynoldson
Self Published
OSR
Levels … 3-4?

This adventure details a cave system of eighty or so rooms stuffed full of mushrooms and fungus. There are at least seven major factions running around inside, with several other random individuals and scattered unaligned monsters. There’s no motivation for initial exploration, but several possibilities, although once in there are several things can be done for the various factions. It’s got a decent layout, above average, to be sure, for a pay what you want product.

I am convinced that a good dungeon (an exploratory one, anyway) lives and dies by its social content. Without a social element the dungeon can be one-dimensional, combat after combat, and therefore boring. The set-piece design, spicing up combat, is not a solution, nor are traps or puzzles. A strong mix with a STRONG social element is the solution. Variety. The cave system here has seven major factions in the caves. Most, but not all, will talk to the party in one way or another. Most would like to see at least one of the other factions wiped out. They are varied enough to provide some variety in how they play and how the party interacts with them. In addition to the factions, and the mini-quests they can hand out, there are several unaligned individuals, each with their own goals. The friendly merman, the crazy old mage, the sad ghost, the witch. Most of the factions would like to see at least one of them wiped out. Most of the individuals are harmless or at least not as odious as the people wanted them killed. Moral quandaries! Yeah! In short, there are a lot of folks to interact with, get into trouble with, ally with, and have fun with. Good Time, good times.

The encounters tend toward two types: someone lives here or magic mushrooms. Someone lives here is pretty obvious, and it’s usually tied to one of the factions. Mushroom farming, guard rooms, defences and so forth. Magic Mushroom caves usually have a mushroom of sort in them, with some magical effect. In spite of many of the rooms being stuffed full of magic mushrooms, the rooms tend to the mundane side of the spectrum. Upside down waterfalls and other weird unexplained things (other than the shrooms) are pretty rare occurrences. In essence, take a normal cave room in a simple dungeon, shove it full of mushrooms, and call it a day. This is a little harsh but I would contend that the encounters tend more toward that side of the spectrum than they do The Fantastic. Most of the encounters have a couple of longish paragraphs that describe them, generally an appearance paragraph and then an effects paragraph. Here’s one of the better ones: “Dotted around this cave are seven large globular Fly Puffball Mushrooms. They wobble and shake and a faint humming noise can be heard coming from within them.” That’s not terrible. I would call it great, either, but there is an effort. There is some … misplaced? information in places that doesn’t do the DM any favors when hunting the wumpus for information during play. For example, you can parlay with the goblin tribe. They meet you at the entrance to their complex and escort you to meet the king. In the descriptions of the kings throne room you’re told that the king does NOT meet with parlay folks in that room, instead he meets with them in a different room. That room has no mention of the parlay at all, it’s just a pretty non-descript room. I understand, I think, the logic. The king is the one that parlays and the king is normally in his throne room so the parlay is described under the king description in the throne room. But that’s not what the ‘usual’ occurrence for the parlay, I would assert. This being D&D, the fucking players will probably end up parlaying with him on the other side of the map entirely, but, still, it seems off to me. I could cite other example of this organization logic as well.

The map is pretty, but I think may be a bit linear. It is, essentially, a ring road with passage off of it. There’s a river running through things, and some teleport circles that can add some variety. Once in a “section”, though, it’s essentially just side passages. It’s colorful, with some features on it like a few slopes and ledges. It could have been improved with, perhaps, some notations of which rooms have enemies in them (a small red dot or something?) Given the faction play, and the way some areas may mobilize (which is usually well detailed and not verbose) it would have perhaps been useful to have that data to help run the game a bit smoother without either having to do it yourself or hunt through the book during play to find out who can hear/see/notice nearby. That’s really just nit picking though, the map is serviceable.

Treasure seems a bit light to me. Gold required to level becomes a bit high at levels 3-4 (which I think this area is targeted at.) There are a couple of rooms with hoard-like treasures but I think the entirety could be doubled or tripled to get to some decent loot for Gold=XP games. I’m pretty sure this is targeted at those sorts of games, so the lightness seems weird. Likewise the magic seems a bit … off. The potions and scrolls are just potions and scrolls. The shields are +2, maybe with a logo of St Gygax on them. Not exactly exciting content there. There’s a unique magic item or three which are much more interesting. Better descriptions, more unique instead of book, scrolls on fey skin, wings embedded, or potions with eyes in them or dead dark fey … that’s the way I want in my magic items. There is some REALLY great mundane treasure though, including some dark fey/pixies rapped in amber jewelry and so on. Nice!

There’s an ok wandering table, with most of them doing something, and an ok but not great rumor table. I like my rumors a little more … conversational. A tidbit overheard, and so on. While there’s no hook there is enough in the dungeon to give the players one … although I would have liked to see it better integrated into the rumors table. The treasure hoards of the fey, the immortality mushroom, and so on. More not-pickings.

I’m keeping this, but I think it’s on the edge of what I usually keep. I may be unduly influenced by fey, caves, and mushrooms being present.Large social environments are not the most common thing to encounter, though, and the writing is probably evocative enough to kickstart the DM. This is pay what you want at DriveThu, etc.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/178717/The-Fungus-Forest?1892600

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Incursion of the Chained Devils

Posted on June 6, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

chaind
By Jeremy Raedan
Self-Published
1e
Levels 5-7

Three nights ago, strange lights and screams were heard from the local temple of Ishtar (or equivalent in your game, perhaps Loviatar, Xochiquetzal, or even Dionysus.). Most of the lower level priestesses fled. Can the PCs save the temple of Ishtar from the incursion of the chain devils?

This is a mostly-hacking adventure in a 20 room temple to the goddess of love that has been overrun with (mostly) chain devils. It is, essentially, rooms full of half-naked priestesses being tortured (in a pg-13 manner) with a full other encounters tossed in as well.A few of the monster encounters (the non chain-devil ones) are interesting, but the writing, while terse, is a bit bland for my tastes. Not terrible, but a little flat. Combined with the rather one-note design of “rooms with monsters” then this one is hard to swallow.

First off, the thing, while ““erotic”” this is not exactly prurient. “Chained to the wall is the temple librarian.” or “Except for a number of piercings she is completely nude and being whipped by muscular humanoids, similarly devoid of clothing.” “A nearly nude woman on a divan.” Ok, I’ think I covered all of the middleclass morality. The middle one might be worse thing, by far. Also, there’s one sex toy, a +2 dildo.

The writing in this is a bit flat for my tastes. Here’s an example, from the room with the librarian chained to the wall, above: “Tormenting her is an inquisitor kyton, a horrible monstrosity in a bishop’s outfit with tongs for arms. He clicks the pincers of one arm while heating the other pair red hot in a brazier” The good part here is that something is going on in the room. A captive and a menacing monster, replete with a bishop’s outfit and pincer arms. The good news is that most of the rooms have the creatures actually doing something. This gives the encounters a little more … relatability? The writing, though, is just a little flat.

There’s a ncie pool of blood that congeals into a blood golum, that’s nice. There’s also a pool of water with a devil in it that can drown characters though creating water in the lungs. Again, a nice little touch. But they don’t really have much life or color beyond that. There’s a encounter with devils munching away on bodies and even that doesn’t really communicate the horror of such an encounter.

Also: the treasure seems light for fifth to seventh level characters. There’s some reward for rescuing priestesses, and the goddess give you a random bonus as well, but the gold=xp thing looms in the background.

There’s a nice one page summary of the NPC’s in the back, with each of their personalities present. One of the hooks also has a nice idea: characters want a cleric hench? Rescuing one from a devil-filled temple is a great way to get a hench!

The creatures doing things in the rooms are good. There’s an effort made to give it an evocative description. It’s a little one-dimensional for my tastes (which the designer fully admits in the overview at the online store.) Rescuing a bunch of priestesses, and getting them out, is a nice little touch, as, perhaps, the traitor one. I’m not often fond of “traitor” NCP’s, they tend to be used too much and thus the players never trust anyone in the dungeon. IN this adventure though the traitor is mixed in with quite a few other captives to be rescued, which leaves less of a bad taste in the mouth.

I’ve talked myself into this being an ok adventure. Not necessarily one I would run, but an ok adventure for what it is. Maybe a 70% ‘C’.

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Dungeon Magazine #85

Posted on June 4, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

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Ever-Changing Fortunes
By Peter Zollers
3e
Level 2

This monster circus (bandits, kobolds, trogs, drow) has several nice little bits going for it. It’s got the usual issues with a lack of focus in the DM text bloating it with useless trivia and making it hard to pull out the nice bits. A kobold comes to town begging for help, which leads to bandits in the woods and a nice- (but linear) cave system followed by a boring mine housing the drow. In principle the kobold hook is quite nice, I think, but it is marred by the read-aloud, lengthy DM nonsense, and then a “roll to continue the adventure” diplomacy check with the kobold. Fail, and you don’t get to go on the adventure. The bandit ambush takes up a full page (stupid 3e stat blocks!) but the associated bandit content (they spy at a wilderness inn and hit you on the way out of the caves if you’ve loose lips! The spies also have some personality to help run them) is pretty nice and gives a nice continuity to the adventure and (at least a couple) of the encounters. The cave system gives way to the mine and it’s mostly a linear affair. If that were ignored then I could point to the varied terrain and obstacles in the cave, elevation, boulders, water levels, etc, as being nice elements which provide both variety and tactical opportunities for both sides. The kobolds, also, can be bargained with, which is always nice to see. The mine is mostly boring content, presented quite verbose, and has one of the charm of the caves. The cave and/or bandits might be worth lifting for something else, at least as concepts, but the linear nature makes this one too hard to save.

Lord of the Scarlet Tide
By James Jacobs
3e
Level 9

Wow. Suck. A long/large adventure through 24 or so underdark caves and passages trying to find the source of an infection. It’s just room after room of either a boring monster or an overly-long description of an empty room. You meet a mind flayer to talk to! Who turns on you. 🙁 A little ruined city, full of boring monsters, leads to a ruined temple, full of ghosts, and a magic item to cure the disease. It all seems pretty monotonous to me, with little, except maybe a behir, to mix things up. L>A>M>E It’s as if you created a large random dungeon map and did a 50/50 chance: stuff the room with 2d6 orcs or write two paragraphs describing how the room is empty. That’s not an adventure, or at least a good one, in my book.

Flesh to Stone
By Anthony Talanay
3e
Level 7

Side-Trek! A couple of stone giants keep some cockatrice as pets, in a pen.

Natural Selection
By Matthew G. Adkins
3e
Level 5

Druids used to be popular bad guys in 1980’s D&D. They return! There’s some bullshit/vomit-in-the-mouth “natures balance” stuff in this adventure, thankfully mostly in the background so it can be ignored. A ranger keep is overrun by monsters and you get to investigate, kill the monsters, and recover the bodies. It’s just an excuse to put a bunch of monsters in close proximity to each other. Theoretically there might be some chances to parley with at least one group and/or get the creatures to fight each other. It ends, probably, with fighting the asshole druids, which can be a tough fight since the leader is L8. There’s some nice imagery here and there regarding the monsters feeding on the dead rangers bodies, but the map is boring and it’s just a monsters circus.

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Things to NOT check out …

Posted on June 1, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

Sometimes I buy things and they are not what what I expect and/or don’t warrant their own separate review. I’d been shelving this stuff, but just now ran in to two in a row. Better to jot down a note so others will now what to expect.

The Sacrilegious Sage
Frugal GM

The RPGNOW page notes that this is an “adventure.” It is not. The actual text, once purchased, notes it’s an adventure seed. That’s closer to the truth. Six randomly generated cave levels look like a fractal tool made them, and then six VERY generic ideas for the levels. “This level has gemstones.” This level has tribes of warring orcs” or “this level has dwarf miners” or “this level has a river.” My issue here is that the shop page doesn’t say “seeds” and instead references “adventure.” I know I’ve been dinged before for having too strict a taxonomy … but at least I recognize the dangers in misaligned expectations.

The Tree Maze of the Twisted Druid
by Chris Kutalik

This is one of those “found” adventures from childhood, much like Habitation of the Stone Giant Lord or Underport. These things remind me of local county museums. Every county has least one and they are all alike in their mediocrity … and every once in awhile you find something interesting in one of them. (A map of the 1820 wilderness Indiana showing the trails and “roads”!) This falls mostly in to the “usual stuff” category, with most of the adventure not living up to the first sentence: the Twisted Druid needs a punch in the nuts. It’s got a couple of charming, age-appropriate hooks. The sheriff shows up and orders you to being him the druids head or he’ll take yours! He has 4d8 hobliars in ring mail and bec de corbins! In another hook, a naked lady kisses you while you are in a tavern and then 4d6 sailors drug you and take your best stuff, hiding it in the maze. Ah, to be young and random again! The rest of the adventure though, with few exceptions, fall in to the “encounter 2d8 enemies” camp of adventure design. The author has not fallen completely in to the puberty trap yet, or been ruined by genercism, but it’s more like the end of Underport than it is the beginning.

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The Witch of Tarriswoods

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

witcht
By John Fredricks
Sharp Mountain Games
OSR
Levels 3-7

Strange creatures threaten the woods just east of the peaceful town of Adela. Many fear that an evil witch has loosed a great curse upon the land. Who will venture forth and find the cause of these troubles? Who will confront the Witch of the Tarriswoods?

This is a small and mostly linear adventure with some old-fashioned charm to it. The town is threatened and, after a bit of investigatory pretext, a short two encounter wilderness section gives way to a small seven room dungeon. The adventure has some problems with communicating basic information, like how many bad guys in a room, but does a decent little job of presenting the encounters as real places, rather than forced set pieces. Look, I like weird shit that talks to you and this has that.

There is a REFRESHINGLY lack of lengthy background information and then the little town is launched into. Or, rather, the NPC’s in the little town. Four or five NPC’s are presented, each with a little paragraph and then a nice little bullet list of what they know about the current troubles. I could quibble a bit about the length of the “general” text for each NPC, but recognizing that the town is a social encounter, and providing data to the DM focused around that, their personalities and what they know, helps immensely in running an adventure. I don’t really give a shit how much stew at the inn costs, I care about the innkeepers data that he’s going to relate and how to run him. This adventure recognizes that. And it manages to ALMOST fit it all onto one page … glory be, it’s almost a DM’s reference sheet!

There’s just one problem. There’s no description of what’s going on, who the baddies are, etc. “The farmers and hunters aren’t able to work the fiends!” Ok. “Traders aren’t coming because of the attacks!” Ok. Uh … Who’s attacking? What’s attacking? Description? There’s absolutely no indication ANYWHERE in the adventure of what’s attacking the folk. What are they afraid? Who’s attacking? Who knows. The witch? Skeletons? Bandits? An atrophal?

It is this kind of … casual overlooking of information that’s so frustrating in this adventure. There’s a skeleton attack in the woods, in a nice flooded graveyard. There’s no indication of how many skeletons attack. There’s an attack, later on while in the dungeon, by ‘goppers’, but, again, there’s no indication of how many attack. This might also be the case with the Animated Vine attack, which at one point is referred to as vines, plural.

And then there’s the treasure. There is, essentially, none. Maybe, 150gp in statues, 150gp in bracelets, a couple of scrolls, and a magic marble. Oh, and a 300gp emerald! That’s ain’t gonna be enough XP to level. Not even close. I see this time and again in ‘OSR’ adventures: not enough treasure. I’m usually not very hardcore about this, but, come on, it’s gold for XP people, make a toekn effort to understand the rewards for the game you’re writing for! That said … the magic marble that sings while it is rolling is cool, as is a ring that turns you into a fish. Both non-standard and both excellent items for a party to find creative uses for.

I found the encounters rather charming. From the woodcutter running out of his cabin, to skeletons with rusty scimitars arising from a flooded graveyard, to mud monsters. There’s a couple of stone blocks that talk to each other, and you, and need to be avoided lest they warn the dungeon of the approach of a klingon warrior. Likewise, some clouds rain on the party while they go up a hill. This is a WONDERFUL encounter! Just a couple of clouds, that follow the party and rain on them. This is the perfect kind of free-form setup and I love this kind of stuff. ‘Figure out a way up the hill … made harder by the obstacle.’ The dungeon has a window! And a roof! And both can be exploited! Yeah! Hurray for thinking outside the box, and providing an environment that supports that kind of play.

The entire adventure is pretty short. It’s … incomplete? in places. It has a good, if a bit bland, summary for running the NPC’s, and some refreshing encounters in the dungeon. I’d say the designer is on a good path. A little trimming, a little more life in the writing, a little less loose in the details and you’d have a little adventure that’s not too terrible.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/149842/The-Witch-of-the-Tarriswoods?1892600

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Dungeon Magazine #84

Posted on May 28, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d84
The Harrowing
By Monte Cook
D&D
Level 15

While wandering in the forest you see some dead birds. Following them leads to a cave complex, and then a gate to the demonweb. This is quite a long adventure, taking up 44 of this issues 120 pages. It is, essentially, one long hack-fest. Enter room. Fight monster. Go to next room. The maps for the two areas (the caves and demonweb) have some interesting features, with ceiling and floor entrances and exits, but probably not enough to recommend them. Fight some drow. Fight some Slaad. Fight some drow who are fighting some slaad. A special prize for Monte: I believe this is the first example, in Dungeon anyway, of the shitty linear 3e adventure. Some people really like this one. You should not play D&D with those people.

Demonclaw
By Peter R. Hopkins
D&D
Level 5

This may be the dictionary definition of Wall of Text. It goes on and on, paragraph after paragraph, with little to save the poor DM from misery. It features such classics as:

“2. Closets. These rooms are identical. Each has several hooks affixed to interior walls. Just inside the doorway sits a low shelf designed to hold boots and shoes. An everburning torch is mounted to the wall opposite the door. Both chambers are empty.”

Which is a fine description of a boring closet. It adds nothing and nor do many of the room descriptions. Fourteen rooms of a wizard’s tower. It provides stats for a dead body on the floor, that will not come back to life in any way during this boring snoozefest. There’s nothing in this wizard’s tower that feels remotely wizard like. 🙁

The Dying of the Light
By Chris Doyle
D&D
Level 10

Nice flavor to the complication/premise in this. Seven vampires live in a castle. You have from Sunup to Sundown to kill them all. At Sundown they awake and exact their revenge, for the parties raid, on the small town nearby. The parties hook arrives by a winged cat with an arrow in its ass … a nice addition. It’s got good general DM advice, a nice order of battle for how the castle reacts to incursions as well as nice overview sections to get oriented to things. A good map supports the adventure, giving the party non-linear opportunities. Good “classics” like the well having a trap door at the bottom, and so on. Also, winged owlbears and a giant undead dinosaur in the lake in front of the castle. This is a great example of an otherwise good adventure being ruined by form. The ideas are wonderful, but marred by the slavish devotion to rigor in description. Boring read-aloud unrelated to the interesting things in the room. Wordy DM text. Full creature stats and longish references to where in the DMG to find data … repeated. I like this adventure a lot, but it needs a good photocopy and highlight, or a strong rewrite to focus the DM on the important stuff. Fun.

Dungeon of the Fire Opal
By Jonathan Tweet
D&D
Level 10

Tweet is probably an ok DM. He’s not a good writer. This is the 3e example dungeon, which is also the 1e example dungeon. You know, the one with the scroll in the water skeleton and the platform secret door? Tweet is prolific with advice in this. Some advice is good. It’s general theme might be “don’t let the rules constrain you.” Being generous with clues, how to let the party find the choke point secret door, warning that a dangerous encounter is up ahead, and so on. He also gives this sort of advice in some of the rooms, and it’s here that things go a bit south; it gets tedious. It turns it into almost a n00b dungeon, for a DM that’s never played D&D before. In that respect it MIGHT be fine, but it also falls in the old trap of tedious text. Some of the rooms are QUITE long while most contain boring read-aloud and more boring DM text, especially of the “what this room used to be that now no longer has relation to the adventure” kind of description. Trivia not useful for the DM running the adventure. It’s also pretty boring. “Once this room was a well stocked larder …” Ok hooks and a pretext of rumors are appreciated, but in the end it’s just a boring dungeon with not much interesting going on.

Armistice
By Peter Vinogradov
D&D
Level 7

More of a sandbox adventure. A valley is presented along with the various enemy commanders who make up the small companies present. They are at war with each other. There are a couple of (generic) villages in the valley, non-aligned. There are some werewolves running amok, freed by a rogue commander on one side. The party comes into this mess after being hired, outside the valley, but the two lords the troops report to. They have made peace and need someone to go tell their troops. Thus the adventure involves wandering the valley to find the various troops/commanders and convincing them the war is over. And dealing with the werewolf threat making things harder. It’s got some good high-level window dressing, like the daughter of one lord being married to another to seal the peace, and women talking about looking forward to their husbands return, and so on. After a read-through to get an overview then most of the adventure boils down to just the DM’s map and a couple of reference pages, kindly provided for the DM. The adventure could have used a few more … specifics? Ideas? about werewolf tactics/flavor and maybe even soldier flavor. That would have pushed this one over the top into Strong Recommend territory. Decent premise, good reference material, some bits of flavor. An ok adventure setup that will unfold as the party wills.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 4 Comments

The Stink of Golanda

Posted on May 25, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

stgol
By Steve Willett
Polyhedron Games
OSRIC
Levels 9-11

Golanda, the Kingdom of Hope, devoted to the good of its people and all people. It’s knights travel Ropa looking for service in just causes. Its priests roam the continent healing the sick and injured with no regard to race, faith or morality. But something smells in Eddiston and it’s the stink of corruption.

Oh, where to start … this is a linear adventure with light content, a pure railroad from start to end. There’s not really a plot shield here, there’s not enough content for that. There might be … five combats? There’s a couple of word pages, printed as a PDF that describe some convoluted backstory with named right out of the goofball unmemorable Forgotten Realms names. Go to the damned (as in ‘Hell-Damned’) town. Question someone. Have a combat. Question someone. Have a combat. Question someone. Have a combat. Meet a dude. Have a combat. Have the finale combat with an EHP and a demon. That’s it.

The entire thing is presented in a very conversational form. It’s as if you were sitting down, having a beer with someone, and they described their last game to you. It’s not quite incoherent, but it’s also not quite all there. It’s full of anecdotal events. That’s good! They ground the detail and provide something to hang your hat on. But it’s bad in the conversational form it’s presented in.

Out of nowhere there’s a table presented on what you see if you climb up to the city walls. It’s not bad: a demon scurrying across a street, a zombie bumping into a wall, a panicked dog, people cowering in a corner. This is decent content. Maybe a little generic, but it’s trying. There are plenty of example like this in the adventure (well, at least five anyway.) A daft old woman, zombies feeding on bodies, and so on. That’s the sort of decent, specific, content that many adventures don’t bother to describe. “12 zombies” or maybe “12 zombies attacking some villagers” is the usual fair. It could be even more specific, but what’s here IS decent … when it tries. This leads into the monsters actually DOING things. They argue. They feed, and so on. Again, somehow this sort of content has been lost in many modern adventures.

Make no mistake: this is terrible. It’s linear. It’s conversational. It is, at best, just a framework. Stat blocks take up fifty percent of a page. It’s not so much organized as it is a story narrative, told linearly. It reminds me of some of the poorer Adventurers League stuff, like The Seer, but organized in a far worse fashion. Devoid of much content. What there is is linear. There are brief bright sports with the encounter descriptions, but its hard for me to even call them encounter descriptions.

If you sat down, right now, and typed up, in Word, describing the last adventure you ran, in as if you were talking to your buddy, then you’d have this adventure.

Also: the intro notes there’s corruption present. Wellllll…. as in “overrun by demons?” Yes.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/102124/The-Stink-in-Golanda?1892600

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Night of the Mad Kobold

Posted on May 23, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

nmk
By Dave Olson
Cut to the Chase Games
5e
Level 1

The town of Cresthill enjoys a favorable location along the winding Graywand River. Trade is good, and the prominent gnomes of House Kelver run most of the businesses to the prosperity of the people. Now, however, a dangerous lunatic—a kobold from the nearby Talon Hills—has decided the gnomes of House Kelver need to be a taught a fiery lesson, and only a band of heroes can stop his plot.

There are about six different versions of this, each for a different system. I somehow managed to end up with the 5e version instead of the S&W version. This is a magic ren-faire adventure, in a gnome city with an alchemist kobold constructing bombs of flour and fire beetle. It’s mostly linear, with a brief free-range element in the middle, and a lot of contrivances to make up a plot. It’s also quite lengthy, and I’d say boring/uninspiring, for the amount of content.

Only about six of the twenty pages are the core content of the adventure. There’s quite a few pre-amble pages with instructions and backgrounds, and quite a few pages in the rear for NPC stats and personalities, maps, and so on. I’m not sure when this “lots of useless shit and not much adventure content” began, but I suspect it has something to do with the Pay Per Word scene. If I can provide the same content three different ways then I only have to be original once. For some definition of original that I may not agree with.

This verbosity-to-little-effect continues in the adventure proper. The key NPC’s get little offset boxes with their personalities and motivations noted. That’s great, in theory. It helps you find the content during the adventure. In practice, these sections are a couple of paragraphs long and drone on and on, using a maximal number of words to convey simple concepts. The guard captain is a family man, dedicated, and dislike his corrupt boss. The adventure takes two paragraphs to tell us those three things. The added words do nothing. In fact, they detract from the adventure because now the DM has to read the lengthy ass paragraphs when running the adventure instead of just scanning one sentence that says: family-man, dedicated, hates lazy corrupt boss. My language isn’t that good. It’s too fact based and doesn’t take advantage of the wealth the english dictionary provides. My language is also AT LEAST ten times better than the two paragraphs provided, because my language is usable to run the game.

There is a paragrapgh or so in the beginning that tells us all about kobolds. Their history in D&D, that these kobold sin this adventure are a different common brown type, and so on. It goes on and on, adding nothing useful to the adventure … until finally it says: And don’t forget, they ‘Yip!’” Once decent thing to help the DM bring the adventure to life. They Yip, in a paragraph of text. And I should say that that kind of direct game-enhancing content (such as, They Yip) is few and far between in this adventure. When there’s read it’s lengthy. The DM sections are lengthy. The NPC descriptions are lengthy. Seldom do they contain useful things and seldom still do they provide content like: They Yip.

There’s a … railroad? Or maybe it’s just very linear and full of contrivances to advance the plot. Hmmm. I think that means railroad. Anyway, the inciting event is an explosion. It’s assumed the characters help out, I guess out of the kindness of their hearts? If they ask around the milling crowd they get a description of someone seen entering several weeks ago. Giving this to the guard captain causes him to recognize the dude. You go find the dude in a bar, only to be attacked by some thug buddies. The dude conveniently falls unconscious so you can question him. You run around town, in the “free play” portion, finding the other bombs. It’s assumed that somewhere along the route you meet the mad kobold bomber and find out there’s a fifth bomb.

I think it’s fair to say that this is pretty typical adventure schlock.First you ask around, then run around, then finally fight the baddie. It’s boring, lame, and not very interesting, providing the barest of ties to try and connect things. You have to question the crowd. Twice. You have to then talk to the captain. You have to not kill the corrupt guard and not kill him. You have to accidentally run into the kobold while going from place to place in town. Why is the town gnomish? For no particular reason, and it doesn’t really feel like a gnome town at all. Why is the bad guy a kobold? For no particular reason. It’s this sense of the generic that comes from applying fantastic tags to the mundane that rubs me such the wrong way with these magical ren-faire settings.

There’s also this weird vibe around defusing the ‘bombs.’ The players are encouraged to be creative, by the text, and then it goes to great trouble to say what WON’T work. The bombs have a fire beetle in them. But if you kill the beetle then the reagent still goes off and the thing explode. This means that there ARE right answers. On the one hand limitations should be fine. On the other, making them arbitrary seems counterproductive to encouraging the party to think freely.

The amount of DM fiat to make the thing work right, the linearity, verbosity, and dullness of the general text make this a skip for me. The addition to gnomes and kobolds, for no particular reason, and the magical ren-faire alchemist stuff is just a turn off. I wish the adventure had not tried to explain things. It’s a magic bomb. It’s doesn’t need a flour/fire beetle explanation. Exploding skulls, yellow with flaming eyes that cackle manically as they get close to *BOOM* time? That I could accept without question.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/153213/WK0-Night-of-the-Mad-Kobold-5E?1892600

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Dungeon Magazine #83

Posted on May 21, 2016 by Bryce Lynch

d83
Deep Freeze
By Cameron Widen
D&D
Level 2

Joy. An asylum. I’ll put this in the pile of museum and archeology dig adventures I’ve collected. You’re hired to find some missing people who were to deliver supplies to an asylum. Turns out they never made it and weather forces you to stay overnight. Blah blah blah evil plot, enslaved people digging something out of the nearby mountain. It’s unclear why the party doesn’t just kill everyone they see and burn the place down right after “asylum” and “don’t know anything about it” and “please stay the night to keep out of the weather.” You know the deal. Super long read-alouds for mundane locations that add nothing, and longer DM text that is also mostly irrelevant to the adventure make this a pain to run. And since it’s a “mystery” then all of the mystery-breaking spells the characters have access to are gimped. Lazy. One of the “subtle clues” that the party is suppose to pick up on is that one of the beds have bed bugs … evidence that the good doctor has not been working alone for months. A) No one listened to the monologue. B) No one is going to pick up on that. C) They already stabbed the guy when he opened the door. Asylum & bad weather, remember? Nice weird art on page 26 by …. Marc Sasso? (Ha! Turns out he’s done Dio covers!) Otherwise this adventure has nothing interesting to offer.

Iriandel
By Tito Leati
D&D
Level 4

Find & explore a barrow to cure a cursed unicorn. This thing is full of LONG monologues and overly-descriptive DM text. It could easy be 75% shorter and lose nothing. I’m fond of barrows and this has a barrow, which means I’m fond of it. The barrow is decently done, feels barrow-like and has several interesting encounters … including one that seems out of Grimtooth that could be telegraphed better. The clues to find the barrow are decent, if long. There’s a tribe of evil humanoids that will talk to you and you can buy info/stuff from. Inexplicably, they attack the starting village while you’re on the way back from the barrow. I get the nice visual and the scene the designer is going for, but it seems very out of place and random. The spear you recover from the barrow is the cursed unicorn’s horn. You need to touch them together to cure the unicorn. The spear is powerful. If they had stopped there it would have been ok. “Keeping the spear is an evil act.” Welllllll…… yes, it is. Calling it an evil act comes with DM-fiat baggage, and all of the implied punishment … even though the adventure doesn’t actually say anything else. TELLING the party the spear is super powerful, describing the powers, and THEN giving them a choice would be delicious indeed.

London Calling
By Andy Collins
Dark*MAtter

Indian diabolist attempts to summon a demon named Kali to earth. Maybe there are gypsies that steal children and penny pinching scots also? Scene based, and there are six. You can shove your scenes up your ass Andy Collins. Go play Vampire or wait eight more years for Fiasco.

Depths of Rage
By J.D. Walker
D&D
Level 3

Oh! Oh! I knew I recognized this issue! It’s got one of my favorite adventures in it! I love this one! At least, I REMEMBER it as being one of my favorites … sooo …. I’m probably reviewing this one through rose glasses.

A week ago the local DCC mob went all funnel up in the local goblin caves … and no one came out as first level … or came back at all. Full of old people, women, and children, the party is encouraged to take a shot … and lured by a magic sword the goblin leader has. This intro is pretty abstract in the adventure and could use just a bit more colour.

The caves are multi-level, with bridges, chasms, chimneys, multiple ledges, cramped corridors, short 5’ ceilings full of smoke from torches, and other cave features. And then suddenly some crazed goblins come screaming out the darkness! There’s some nonsense about how they are barbarians, but it’s TOTALLY that cave scene in 13th Warrior (and fuck you if you don’t like 13th warrior! It’s one of the two best D&D movies EVAR!) Primitive cannibal goblins, fetishes all over the place shoved in the cracks & crevices, war paint, howling goblins, tight and evocative setting. I fucking love this cave! And THEN the place changes. After killing the leader there’s an earthquake the caves change, with new challenges to overcome! There’s even some faction play thrown in, with the bitter shamen being discovered (maybe) early on, and he’s willing to sell out the chief, as well as an NPC ranger. The read-aloud, while not imaginative, is mercifully short. The DM text, while not terse by my standards, is not the usual completely over-prescriptive text usually found in Dungeon, except maybe in its description of the cave features, which goes on for two pages. The reaction section, to the parties intrusion, could also be beefed up a little. A gross shamen bowl full of blood that’s Bulls Strength? Sign me up! I WAS disappointed that the magic sword is only a +2 longsword. 🙁 LAME!

Alterations
By Philip Athans
D&D Greyhawk 2000
Level 1

Post-industrial Greyhawk. IE: Shadowrun. Hired to retrieve a package from a bad part of town, the party finds something is wrong, the place being trashed and the street gang turned into zombies. They find a genetics lab in the basement. The DM text needs focus; important information is hidden after trivia. The various sections are nicely done though, with the “normal” house being a combination of horror and zombiepocalypse and the lab basement being a nice little sci-fi ruined genetics lab with a creature loose. Nice wandering monster table for the neighborhood also, with the encounters there offering some nice roleplay opportunities that FEEL like post-industrial/Shadowrun. Some of the initial read-aloud is quite overblown: “No one really wants to know what’s going on in Crossroads tonight, or any night ….” That’s some wannabe author shit right there. This is definitely highlighter bait though.

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