tenfootpole.org

by Mark Shipley & Scott Stabbert
Frog God Games
Swords & Wizardry
Level 7

… But the Black Monastery was not gone forever. Over nearly two centuries since its destruction, the Black Monastery has returned from time to time to haunt the Hill of Mornay. Impossible as it seems, there have been at least five incidents in which witnesses have reported finding the Hill of Mornay once again crowned with black walls and slate-roofed towers. In every case, the manifestation of this revenant of the Black Monastery has been accompanied by widespread reports of madness, crime and social unrest in the kingdom. Sometimes, the monastery has appeared only for a night. The last two times, the monastery reappeared atop the hill for as long as three months…each appearance longer than the first.

This is a very classic take on an old school dungeon, marred by some issues with the verboseness of the descriptions. I’m quite enamored with the very earliest examples of dungeons. The period before everything became standardized and before mechanics began their serious encroachment on imagination. This dungeon does a pretty good job of being representative of that period and style. Effects are described rather than slavishly relying on mechanics. The adventure is best when it is being imaginative and ignoring mechanics and the worse when it is describing things from The Standard Books. Yes, AD&D killed D&D. Fuck You AD&D.

The idea is that there’s this monastery once used by evil dudes that kind of winks in and out of existence. Every once in awhile it returns to the same location. What you get is a couple of hundred rooms on a packed old school map with towers and dungeons in addition to the core monastery. Each room is well described. TOO well described. One style of bad adventure writing focuses on an exhaustive description of what’s in the room. How many socks are in the sock drawer, when the socks and sock drawer have nothing to do with the adventure. This isn’t that. This exhibits a more forgivable sin: a conversational style. Just about any room of any significance gets about four paragraphs of text with a couple of sentences, at least, in each one. The core of the room is described in a very … loose? way. The descriptions are good, but the core of the room hides within the text. This results in … long pauses at the table and lots of notes for the DM to make. The rooms all need a very strong edit to remove the conversational style while retaining the wonderfully imaginative things they describe. A talking door is great! Four paragraphs on a talking door? Not so great. Actually, that’s a bad example. The door is easy to run. It’s a talking door. All of the other rooms get the same treatment though and in THOSE there are effects and impacts that are more complicated than “a door that talks.”

Near the talking door there’s a room with a white mist in it. The mist drains/absorbs magic. The door and the mist are great examples of this kind of non-standard/pre-AD&D style of “weird things going on in the dungeon.” But then comes two more paragraphs describing the white mist. How it absorbs magic. What happens if the party does X, and then what happens if Y happens, and what happens if Z occurs. It’s all bullshit. It’s unneeded. Instead of 1/6th of a page in three paragraphs, just describe the basic effect. The lengthy description is not bad, other than the fact it’s lengthy and harder to use at the table.

The core is generally good though. It’s random. It’s got some disconnected stuff in it, like some orcs and goblins and gnolls that are somehow in the place. There’s a mini-cyclops guarding some headis on silver plates. Why? Because Dungeon, that’s why. A hag dead in a hallway? Sure, why not? There’s a ghostly green monk that comes up through the floor and offers dental advice. None of that is the main flavor. The main flavor is ghostly weirdness. It reminds me a lot of Shadowbrook Manor, another adventure I liked. Weird stuff, effects described instead of mechanics listed.

A special note about the magic items. They suck. Mostly. +1 swords. +3 plate mail. Sometimes they get to something more interesting, like a rigor mortis effect on a sword or some such. This is what I mean when I complain about book standardization. Pulling monster stats or magic items out of a book is easy. Too easy. It’s the imagination and creativity that we want, that we are paying for. That’s what’s important, along with a little organization so you can run the thing. The rooms are a great example of creative and imaginative encounters, in need or organization/editing.

This needs a second edition. It needs a good edit that keeps the evocative and imaginative nature while making the rooms easier to run/ave less text. It needs more on integration … there are great sections on an increase in lycanthropy when the monastery appears, or how some people are turning into ghous, slowly, for example. There’s a great deal here to expand upon and build on, and a good second edition could fulfill all of that.

by Chad Brouillard
Penumbra
d20
Levels 1-3

There’s a tale you might hear in a tavern by the docks if you catch an old sea dog on a dark night laden with rum. He’ll tell you of an all but forgotten sea god with a hatred for the living and their ships that so brazenly cross his waters without offering the blood sacrifice he demanded in the days of yore. The god’s powers have been waning, as brave sailors of all the races bravely cast off in search of far horizons and treasures to fill their holds, but on the darkest of days his might returns. The grizzled sailor may have known someone who set sail on the Sea Maiden, just before such a day three decades ago, and never returned. Others may tell you that the crew of the Sea Maiden was restless, and mutiny was in the air; the crew no doubt ended up hanged as pirates in a distant port. But your storyteller assures you he knows better: the dark god of the sea had his vengeance — and he will have it again one day soon.

This is an encounter with a ghost ship while on sea voyage, and was a pleasant surprise. It supports well the social aspect of the adventure and doesn’t go into great verbosity about either the ghost ship or the player’s ship. Instead it (correctly) concentrates on the people and the activities. This supports the DM in running the adventure. The adventure knows what it and it stays focused on it: it’s a zombie movie.

The Zombie Movie, like Science Fiction, has some underlying themes with the zombies (or zapper guns) just being a backdrop and/or pressure. They have a message, and it’s usually something social. This adventure sets the players up on a ship and then puts pressure on the social environment, both positively and negatively. An abrupt captain. A mistress that the superstitious crew don’t like. A card cheat. A naive cabin boy. A criminal is lockup. A surly cook. The list goes on. Each is a decent trope, and thus easy to remember. The social situation boils during the adventure, up to the point the captain is found dead. Things are then set in motion with the various people forming cliques … all while becalmed in fog. An abandoned ship appears and is then dealt with. It then returns to launch a couple of zombie attacks. That’s the critical moment in which all of the players actions in the adventure come to a head. Did they foster the cliques, treat the sailors like shit, or try to work for unity? How the zombie attack completes is based on what the players did up to that point. ((Not formally, there’s no table or anything, just some advice.) The adventure SUPPORTS the DM in running it, not by exhaustively providing stats or DC checks, but by providing opportunities and consequences and advice. It’s a sandbox social adventure, on a ship.

The player’s ship is described in about two pages. The descriptions concentrate on how the characters will interact with the rooms, not their mundane contents. They crew play darts here. The poker game is here. Bob hangs out here most of the time. People & Activities. This isn’t an exploration adventure, it’s a social adventure, and the author knows it and stays true to the material supporting the social and paying little attention to the exploration, as he should.

Let me cite an example or the setups provided. At the start someone is brought on board by the shore patrol that looks unconscious. The captain orders him put in the brig. A drunk sailor? Something else? The players later learn he’s a criminal being taken somewhere to be turned over to another country/city. If they talk to him he claims to be innocent/persecuted because of who e is. He’s sharp. The players probably figure that out. He works his way in with the crew, especially the marginalized ones. In the end he figures out what is going on before everyone. Now imagine this guy in a cell, up against the bars, screaming about a curse and ghosts and all that. You KNOW he’s a liar and a cheat and will do anything to get out of that cell. What to do, what to do … It’s WONDERFUL. There are a lot of situations like that. There are a lot of little details that bring the place to life, but are easy to remember and run. But it doesn’t go overboard.

I have no problem saying this is one of the better adventures of the d20 era and while not perfect it does a much better job of setting up and supporting a social adventure than almost anything else I’ve seen. Like all/most good social adventures, it could be used in almost any time/setting/genre, as long as you’re willing to throw in a few zombies. It needs a social cheat sheet to go along with the combat one, and maybe a summary of the ship/events also. Otherwise, it’s very good at what it does.

It’s $5 at rpgnow.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/145694/Maiden-Voyage?1892600

by Creighton Broadhurst
Raging Swan Press
Pathfinder
3rd Level

Centuries ago, the Tuath were a mighty folk who strove against the goblins of the Tangled Wood for dominion over that ancient place. Defeated by treachery and their feral, warlike enemies the Tuath’s civilisation was thrown down, their settlements were sacked, their places of strength broken open and their holy places despoiled. The few survivors melted away into the trackless gloom of the deep forest leaving behind nothing but remnants of their once?great culture. The Road of the Dead, a ceremonial pathway representing a soul’s journey to the underworld, is one such fragment that yet lingers in the Tangled Wood awaiting the brave or the foolhardy. A cunningly designed death?trap, it hides the forgotten treasures and legends of a fallen people.

I don’t like reviewing this one, for some reason. Maybe because I’m so disappointed. Most of the review can be summed up by looking at some numbers: 50 pages. 7-10 encounters. Maybe 14-16 pages of actual encounter description. There is some GREAT imagery in this, extremely evocative. It’s also fragmented and disconnected and so verbose that the excitement that comes from the evocative imagery is dulled by the slog through the text.

There’s a sinkhole. It leads to the Path of the Dead, an ancient underground path/area that an old culture had funerary/symbolic meaning. It’s got seven rooms/encounters, a couple with a few parts, a few extra add ons for after the adventure. Each room generally has several features that is described in what I like to call “4.0 style.” A little section detailing lighting, sound, doors, ceilings, etc. One for each. Each cool little thing gets it’s own paragraph. That’s the problem.

Inside a barrow, water dripping from the ceiling. Large menhirs. A sinkhole, dark. The sound of churning water from below. Maybe a light mist. Part of the way down the sinkhole are three leering stone demon faces, covered in light mold/fungus/etc. That’s GREAT! OMG! I’d love to run that room! But it’s all spread out over two pages. The adventure has to describe EVERYTHING. The DC for this, the DC for that, the (irrelevent) history of things, things that are meaningless to the room or adventure, or the plot. The joy is sucked out of it by the explaining. Yes, guidelines for the DM are good. Explaining EVERYTHING is bad. It all gets in the way. “Overly Organized” might be the right description.

I’m not sure what’s going on. Is the length supposed to be a feature? Are Pathfinder DM’s morons? (I doubt it?) Is that the expected behaviour of Pathfinder adventures? I really don’t get it.

This thing could easily be trimmed to be a 1-page adventure, or maybe two. There’s clearly some very good imaginative stuff going on in this, especially the environments. I’d gladly pay $5 for this if it were 1 or 2 pages of the good stuff. $5 for the 50 page monstrosity that it exists as? No. It distracts and takes too much to run. I’ll forgive the linear nature, the challenge/test thing that I hate. The Imagery is REALLY good and works well together as a cohesive whole to present a compelling journey to the afterlife. Well, if it’s edited down.

I really like the imagery. I just can’t stomach the way its presented.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/127517/Road-of-the-Dead-Collectors-Edition?1892600

by Zzarchov Kowolski
LotFP
LotFP

Dunnsmouth is diseased and rotten to the core. Beset by malefactors supernatural and mundane, Dunnsmouth slowly dies in the swamp. But within the rot are mysteries to be solved, evil to be fought, and the Weird to be encountered.

Scenic Dunnsmouth is good. Scenic Dunnsmouth is not an adventure. Here’s the blurb from the LotFP store: “Scenic Dunnsmouth is an adventure for characters of levels 2-5 for use with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing and other traditional role-playing games.”

Yes, sometimes I can be a petty ass and this is one of those times. Scenic is a village. It’s got lots of strange shit going on in it and a lot of weirdos to interact with. I love it. Scenic is not an adventure. It’s a backdrop. It’s a terrific backdrop full of everything Bryce loves. But it’s not an adventure.

I’m not sure why this shit sets me off the way it does. I’ve clearly got some deep wounds to my inner child that this sort of stuff sets off. Probably because of Castle Greyhawk. Everything bad in the world can be traced back to Castle Greyhawk.

I review adventures. I buy adventures to review. People don’t give me things. They try. I politely decline. If I buy an apple and you give me an orange I’m going to be pissed. If I wanted an orange I’d buy an orange.

This is a good supplement. A good village. I’ll almost certainly use it as a backdrop for some other adventure I’m running. But it’s not an adventure and I’ll always feel a little cheated when I look at it. 🙁

[Aso, this is why Zak’s stuff doesn’t get reviewed. He writes great stuff, but they generally don’t fall into the “adventure” category.]

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/127039/Scenic-Dunnsmouth?1892600

by John Tynes
Penumbra
d20
Levels 1-3

Deeptown lies in the shadows of mountains, a town where anything is for sale if you can only meet the price. But in the wild surrounding valleys of the Deeps, it’s the bandits who make the darkest deals–and their ambition comes at a cost far greater than the contents of any wayward caravan. You and your team have just been handed a new job: disrupt a meeting between a bandit lord and his mysterious new allies. At a remote mountain villa, you will strike hard and fast and leave terror in your wake. They give you the tools. You provide the talent. Survive, and you’ll be well rewarded. Fail, and you’ll pay the price. You’ve got three days to raise some hell.

Sometimes I read forum threads where various folks say “Blah blah blah adventure is great!” I jot down the names and grab them when I stumble across them in a garage sale. Such is the case for Three Days to Kill. I can see why folks like this. In the land of generic genericism this adventure has some colour. The colour is scattered and not consistent. Portions of the adventure left me wanting to know more, in a good way. Excited about what I was reading. The main portion of the adventure is a raid on a ruined manor. That portion is relatively short compared to the page count in the rest of the adventure. This adventure covers all of the bases. It doesn’t treat the introduction or the starting village as a second-class part of the adventure. This recognition that the fun takes places EVERYWHERE in D&D is an important one. The journey is the Destination, and all of that jazz. I just wish it were a little more consistent in it’s color, in a bad way, and wish there was A LOT more, in a very good way.

The party is hired, in mysterious circumstances, to go raid a manor where an important meeting is taking place, disrupting the potential alliance being formed. Pretty simple, even though that particular task is not one that is usually seen. There’s this underlying sense of the unsavory that appeals to me. Everything about the adventure, from the village to the hook to the raid, is just a LITTLE bit not kosher. After experiencing adventure after adventure where the goal is to Save the World or Stop Evil, it’s refreshing to see an adventure in which things are a little more mercenary. There’s this sense that something’s not on the up and up … and yet nothing you can point your finger at to say “this is wrong!” It’s pretty skillfully done; no big complex setups, just relatable motivations.

There’s a trade pass through the mountains with a small town in the middle. Bandits abound in the mountains on both sides. The town in the center is a bit unsavory … perhaps a bit … libertarian? As the adventure notes, can you call it bribery and corruption when it’s an integrated way of life and just the way things work here? The town lives in the shadow of the mountains, literally and figuratively. Even this appeals to me. The sort of integrated whole of the environment leaves me wanting to know more about the place. It’s interesting. It’s simple. It’s described in the way that makes your mind race and want to run a game or campaign there. The town backgrounds descriptions are short and punchy yet the page count is rather high. This is because large sections are taken up with supporting sidebars. An NPC stats, or a map, or something like that. Interesting descriptions with easy to find information … that’s a plus.

The first section of the book has these little background snippets on the area, the town, the bandits lords, and the temples in town. Maybe three of four paragraphs on each with some generic sidebar information. (I said the sidebar/supporting information was easy to find, I didn’t say it added much content. 🙂 It’s very strong of 10,000 flavor and atmosphere.

The second portion of the adventure focuses in on a specific event: the Festival of Plenty going on when the party arrives. Again, portions of this are very colorful. An effluent pit and a nice little passion play are the highlights. They are both very well done and are great things to build off of. And then there are the other suggested events. “A drunk ½ orc picks a fight with a PC elf or halfling.” My my my. I wonder how long it took to come up with THAT idea? A dwarf wrestles all comers with a 1gp purse.” Again, not too much there. This kind of boring and uninteresting dreck is jarring in comparison to the better parts. Consistently the 10,000 foot stuff is very good, communicating colour and flavor perfectly. And consistently the specific portions, while organized quite well, are boring as hell. The NPC motivations are done well. The adventure doesn’t waste space on nonsense descriptions. But the specifics are just not interesting at all. The play and the drinking game are standout exceptions. “Ill kill you!” is a Baron Munchausen like drinking game that should delight the players.

After getting hired by some shady guys in masks the party goes on to raid the manor house. In high school I used to play Danger International. Every adventure ended with a raid on the bad guys base. We’d plan our assault, come up with some goofy idea, and then execute it. That’s what’s going on here. There are a wide variety of magic items to assist in the planning and execution that range from the cool to the lame. “Flare Pebbles” are lame little flash bangs. A devil eye floating in a glass jar that always looks towards the nearest/strongest presence of evil is pretty cool. There’s also a glass orb you can look through,kind of like binoculars. Glass orbs are boring, but that’s trivial to change to an eyeball also. Bryce Pro Tip: Organic magic items are always cooler. 🙂 The description of the manor is PERFECT. This isn’t an exploration mission. The room descriptions are about two sentences each and focus on what’s important. An oil lamp, or who hangs out there. The room descriptions match the purpose of the adventure. This section is quite short, and it really doesn’t need to be long. It may be missing an order of battle; what the various groups inside do when attacked. Other than that it recognizes what it needs to do and it does it. Good Job.

Let me note that the adventure then becomes SPECTACULAR. Chaos. Pure Chaos. While the party is attacking one faction turns on a magic mirror. And things start coming through. Who end up not allying with anyone. This makes faction number four (alliance side a, alliance side b, the party, the mirror) and THEN some orcs show up. Chaos! Wonderful wonderful chaos! The adventure is, though, missing a callback.. The presence of orcs in the area should have been a rumor, or maybe some bodies with missing ears or something. Something to trigger the party into saying “Oh shit! the orcs we forgot about!” (Also, the rumor table sucks.) Anyway, this is a great tactic to up the ante. Instead of dictating some nonsense set piece bullshit the adventure instead provides the elements to up tension. This is a great way to make things memorable without the usual set piece nonsense that modern adventures seem to rely upon. (WOTC: You suk.)

The PDF is $5 at rpgnow. I really like the background in this. I’d LUV to know more about the region/town/temples. If every adventure were at least this good I’d be a happy man and probably not running tenfootpole. It’s a long way from perfect, especially as it gets to the specifics, but it is VERY inspirational. It’s the kind of thing you WANT to run. And those are few and far between.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/145648/Three-Days-to-Kill?1892600

by Creighton Broadhurst
Raging Swan Press
Pathfinder
Level 3

Months ago, the necromancer Dunstan Wymer was gored by a wereboar and infected with lycanthropy. Almost driven insane by the realisation of what he had become after awaking amid the gore and viscera of his companions’ eviscerated corpses, he has since shunned civilisation instead seeking only solitude and the company of his undead servants. Terrified of the savage, bloody deeds he performs when the full moon shines down upon the world he now lurks within the remote hermitage at Clear Pool. In a desperate attempt to control his terrible, atavistic urges he has taken to stealing cattle from a nearby village to assuage his bestial lust for fresh, bloody flesh. The unknowing villagers, however, are angry at the continued theft of their livestock and the arrival of a passing band of adventurers gives them the perfect tools to bring the culprit to justice…

There’s at least three adventures with this title. A normal version, an expanded Collector’s Edition, and then some Living Forgotten Realms adventure that I’m pretty sure is not related. If you’re going to pick up a copy of this mediocre werewolf adventure then make sure and get the right one.

As with a lot of adventures, this one doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up. Because of that you get some great stuff mixed in with a lot of half efforts … or less. Ostensibly about a sad wereboar, it tries to mix in some village politics and village life and some modern morality. The party either investigates some missing cattle in the village or gets hired to go to the lair, proper, to pick up some old hermit bones for a relative. The effort to put into these is minimal and they rank just above “Look, we’re playing this adventure tonight.” Lots of words, lots of detail. None of it very interesting. If you’re going to put in words then put in words that are NOT obvious. In both cases they are introduced to the village, it’s problem of the missing cattle, and then end up at the old caves to meet the new hermit. He’s a not-so-evil necromancer who has a bad case of wereboarism. You get extra XP for curing him or getting him to pay the villagers for the cattle he stole. I hate that kind of shit. Hmmm, do I? I hate XP for “correct” morality choices. The inconsistency of the system is lame. XP for overcoming monsters? Sure. Treasure recovery? Ok, if that’s your deal. For being goody-goody? Well… did you tell the players that they are in a goody-goody game and get their XP from being goody-goody? Expectations.

The NPC descriptions for the village provide more fodder for my opinions. “Fierce advocate for a pastoral way of life” is a nice NPC description. So is “eternally nosy self-appointed sheriff.” These are things you can work with and are short enough to not get in the way. “Angered by recent thefts” or “proponent of greater trade & industry” are not as good. In these cases we get more facts than personality, and the NPC descriptions suffer because of it. This is a continuing theme in this adventure. Brief hits with a lot of misses in between. Another good example of this would be the read-aloud in the first room of the cave system: “Dried gore and blood cover the walls and floor. The ceiling bears sprays of dried arterial blood. Ripped, torn and partially eaten animal corpses are scattered about the chamber. “ Short and to the point while still being evocative. But then the kitchen read-aloud describes a typical kitchen. WTF? Text that describes “normal” things is wasted text. This goes for the village description, the read-aloud everywhere, and the cave/wilderness sections. We don’t need a kitchen described to us. We need the unusual described to us. We need the area cemented in our heads and we already have that with most normal areas.

The village presented is supposed to have some conflict going on The pastoral villagers vs. the industrious dwarves. The fey running around in the village. But neither of these is really expanded upon in any way. Just throw away lines in a rumor table or the villagers not really sitting with each other. Instead of the village being a focus, which it should be, instead it’s just barely interesting in any useful way. Oh, there’s lots of text, but it’s unfocused, describing the mundane instead of the potential conflict. There is a great table for events happening in the village. I think there’s like six possibilities. Rather than rolling I’d suggest running all six at once, along with all the dwarf/villager tension, the missing cattle, the hermit bones, and everything else. Adventures are a pretext for the party to get into trouble and more stuff means more trouble, and thus more fun and memories.

The cave system only have about 5 keyed rooms, and only a couple with stuff in them. There’s a nice little random “what you find in an empty room” table, but again it’s a little out of place. Most of it seems to be geared towards a running battle; slick floors and the like. But there’s not really much opportunity of that kind of thing to happen. And why make it a random table? What does that add? Just put the stuff in the empty rooms and gear it toward something in the adventure.

Focus. Focus on the adventure. Don’t focus on the mundane. Don’t focus on the forms. Don’t focus on the stat blocks. Focus on the adventure. Focus on the wonder. Focus on the unusual. Sadly, this adventure doesn’t do that. When the adventure does that it’s great. The read-aloud I quoted is a good example. There’s an NPC described, a captured thief adventurer. WHen you free him he retires to become a fence … and thus a contact for the party. That’s a GREAT thing. None of this “and they send you a reward later” stuff. It’s gameable. It introduces long-term changes to your game, things you can leverage easily in the future. Gameable. Interesting. And then the adventure gives us this, for the main villain: “Socially ill at ease and awkward in crowds he reacts by erecting emotional barriers and keeping social interactions as superficial as possible. He secretly harbours a desire to be a painter, but lacks the skills and materials.“ And that’s just one part of the ten or eleven paragraphs used to describe him and advice on how to play him. Do we really expect he painter shit to come up? Is it interesting? Is it gameable? Does it have direct long-term impact like the fence stuff does?

It’s sad that this is a mediocre also-ran. It could been great. It coulda been a contender.

This is on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/145589/Gibbous-Moon-Collectors-Edition?1892600