tenfootpole.org

by Dyson Logos
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 4-5

“That unholy wailing must be stopped. I sense a great evil lurking in the dark depths of Jedder’s Hole. I can lead you down along the secret paths, but if we falter, the price may be our immortal souls.” – Brother Helmad the Bold

This is a short five page adventure with twelve rooms, in a dungeon/former prison under a (reformed) temple of justice. It’s got some great imagery in it and is well worth whatever I ended up paying (PWYW.)

I’ve always had a hard time with Logos adventures. They are based around his maps and his maps tend to be a little small for my tastes. They are usually pretty well done, with some decent features and good use of elevation, but small. I’m more of a “family size bag of cheesy poofs” kind of adventure guy. But going into it knowing that it’s small helps a bit.

The conceit is this: Suddenly wailing has starts coming from a hole in the Temple of Justice. Bad King Dickhead used to chuck prisoners down there over a hundred years ago. The entire intro section is really well done, with some great advice for the hook. Introduce the temple over several sessions, and then, while visiting one day, the wailing starts up. Maybe in the middle of a ceremony the party is participating in. A wedding perhaps? The wailing, and hole in the floor it comes from, can cause those who really fail their saves to look down into it in horror and then, over 2-10 minutes, throw themselves in … That’s EXCELLENT. A wedding party interrupted, people transfixed in horror … and then the first one throws themselves in, just tipping over the edge! A mad scramble to prevent the others! That’s a good hook, a good set up, and a good effect that allows for great play opportunities.

The imagery in the adventure is well done. Skeletons of former prisoners on the other side of the only door in, having died trying to claw their way through the door. The sounds of bodies being ripped and rended and munched upon, coming from the distance and dark in front of the party as they descend into the hole … Most of the adventure provides these sorts of little bits of imagery that really work well to bring a scene to life in your mind, thereby leveraging the DMs imagination more effectively.

There are a smattering of potential allies in the hole, or enemies for the trigger happy. The magic treasure is quite nicely done. An Amulet of Blood with weird special effects, or a transformed skull that is now a CRystal Ball skull. That’s cool! More adventure should do that sort of thing.

This is a short review for a short adventure. While short is does have a decent amount of stuff going on, with more than enough stuff for the party to juggle in only twelve rooms.

The print version of the magazine is $4. The PDF version if Pay What You Want.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/116433/Brave-the-Labyrinth–Issue-1-PDF?1892600

The Undertemple of Arkon
by Richard LeBlanc Jr.
D&D
Levels 1-3

[This is a periodical, and is my custom I’m only reviewing the adventure therein.]

“A recent report tells of a group of cultists disappearing into the ground where the temple once stood. Perhaps the cult is re-forming in some sort of underground lair. If this is true, then the gods help us.“

This is an underground temple to a panther god (ala Petty Gods.) It’s got about 44 rooms and is keyed in a VERY minimalist format, taking up about six pages of leisurely formatted text. Too minimal/Tegal for my tastes. There’s a highlight or two, all at the beginning, but not enough to avoid the “just another room with a monster” syndrome.

There’s a page of backstory (again, leisurely formatted, so only a couple of paragraphs) that tells of a mysterious giant panther, and the cult that formed around it. It was destroyed by wary villagers, and now rumors are circulating again that the cult is back. AKA, the usual. Attached on this page also is the wandering monster table … which makes little sense to me. Acolytes? Sure. Beetle, cube, undead? Sure. Bugbears and goblins? I don’t get it. The dungeon/undertemple has some captured bugbears, and a dead goblin, but they don’t seem to have any special relation to the temple. Monsters? Rescue party? Escapees? Just a couple of more words would have wonders here. “Escaped Bugbears” or “Bugbear rescue party.” The map is decent; large and lots of loops, a few secrets. It could, perhaps, use more features. Pools, circles, rubble, web, etc.

The encounters are a weird mix of decent and minimalist. The first half dozen or so are fairly decent, but then it drops down in quality quite a bit. Here’s a good example, from room 2:
This room smells sweet, with hints of pine and basil. The columns framing the doorway to the south are smeared with blood and spotted toward their bases with small bloody handprints. The fingers of the hands that left the prints are long and slender–otherwise, it might appear they were left by children.

A little verbose, but quite nice. Compare to this room, later in the dungeon:
Facing the door, armed and at the ready (cannot be surprised), are 2 skeletons with swords and shields

In the first eight rooms there are four or so that are quite interesting. Magical figurines, a slave pit … but then things drop off to “skeleton room” quality. There might be one more later on, with cultists pushing a bugbear at a panther in a cage, trying to make it eat.

The magic items are all +1 sword and +1 shield. The mundane treasure is “gold necklace” or “big sapphire.” This is not the kind of text that inspires a DM. The bloody handprint room? Great! +1 sword? Boring.

Too minimal for me; I’d quite disappointed that the rest of the adventure doesn’t follow the path blazed by those first few rooms.

by Josh Graboff
2e/Gold & Glory

This is a short murder investigation that leads to an evil cult. It’s got several things going for it: multiple factions, people who act like people, random complications, and a presentation style that is “place and timeline” rather than event or scene based. It also lacks a bit of focus, which can be seen in its thirty(!) page length. Overall it’s a pretty good example of how to present an adventure. If it could be tightened up a bit and focused more on gameable content then it would be a sure winner. As is … it’s hard to recommend given my obscenely high standards.

Let’s cover the presentation style first. There’s a timeline presented very early in the adventure. Given no interruptions by the party, this is what the evil cult do when. This is a great start. The cult exists outside of the party. Plans are in motion. Things will happen. Complimenting this is a list of NPC’s the party will/could encounter in the city. Again, very good. You can run into the major NPC’s almost anywhere so grouping them together in the beginning makes sense. Finally there are a list of places. Here’s the old house on the hill, what goes on there, and how the cult uses it. Here’s the whore house, who is there, and what they know. Here is the bar, who is there, and what they know. The sum total of this is that the DM is presented with tools to use to build the adventure around. There’s no need for a railroad, the DM now has the power to determine the whats and wherefores of the actions the party takes. It’s a breathe of fresh air after some of the railroad crap I’ve seen lately. This is how you present an adventure with a plot. Or, rather, how a plot adventure can be transformed into something in which the party has free will. I’m pretty sure Justin Alexander just wrote something to this effect recently. Don’t prep plots, prep situations. Give the DM the tools they need. This adventure does that. Well, mostly.

One of the other nice things is that the NPC’s and minions are not completely one dimensional. They are at least 1.9 dimensional, and sometimes two. They act like real people. If you’re about to slit their throat they surrender, or talk. How many times have we seen slobbering maniacs who don’t surrender and fight to the death? There’s a place for that, sometimes. But there’s an even larger place for people (and monsters) with a fucking hint of self-preservation. When every thing the party meets just attacks until death then the party will no longer try to talk, or parlay, or capture. It’s just a hack-fest. The game is SO much more interesting when the monsters/opponents talk.

This leads into the faction play. There are at least two factions to the evil bad guys, and maybe more if you squint a bit. A is getting too big for their britches and thinks they no longer need B. B is just about fed up with A’s attitude. That’s great! In addition to this there are a group of monsters who might revolt as well as … ready? A TOTALLY UNCONNECTED MAJOR EVENT GOING ON. That’s GREAT! Zombie movies are not about the zombies. It’s about what people do when confronted with pressure. Similarly, the major event in this adventure adds complications to what the party’s already doing. It puts pressure on them and adds all new avenues of events. It’s great!

The adventure does a couple of other nice things, like having large groups of enemies (2d8 guards …) and giving some explicit advice to the DM about how to warn the party that at least one of the Evil Bad Guys is quite powerful. Fair’s fair. A 23rd level orc that looks like a normal orc is not fair. The party needs fair warning that he’s a 23rd level anti-paladin … then there’s no guilt when they charge in and you kill them.

There are two significant improvements I think would have turned this adventure into something really specials. First, a reference sheet. All of the NPC’s on one page in a table, where they are, a couple of words on personalities and maybe what they know. This is the kind of basic DM assistance that every adventure should provide the DM with.

Second, the descriptions are too wordy. They are full of trivia not useful to the adventure. This is usually what I’m referring to when I say something like “the adventure lacks focus.” If it’s not relevant to the adventure then it should almost always be trimmed. The usual sins are “history” and “NPC backstory” (which I guess could be called history also.) The trivia presented is only relevant if it directly impacts the adventure. Then we wouldn’t call it trivia. The adventure does this a lot, in just about every description of a place or NPC.

A good example is the whorehouse. We learn who founded it, and why. But it then goes on to say that the current operators have been running it for 30 years and no one remembers the former owners and only know the cruelty of the current management. Then what’s the point of the history? STOP EXPLAINING! I loathe explanations in D&D adventures. I don’t care where the fucking toilet empties unless the party can explore it. I don’t care about the history of the whorehouse unless it’s relevant to the adventure. The same goes for NPC’s. I don’t care about their twin sister unless it somehow impacts the adventure. It’s irrelevant. Focus! Focus on the adventure!

Unlike most adventures which lack focus, this one does provide some good content. After the backstory/history generally comes a sentence or two of descriptive text or attitude that helps you bring the NPC to life. This is a bit hit & miss. The whores get some decent personality/quirks but many of the other NPC’s could use a bit more … life? They need a quirk, something to remember them by, something to bring them to life. The tavern, where the adventure starts is a good example of this. The NPC’s there come off a bit flat, as does the tavern proper. It/they need something else to bring it all to life and really solidify itself in the DMs head.

Again, while not a good adventure it’s not really a bad one either. Hopefully we’ll see more, and better, in the future.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/105052/Sordid-Stories-from-the-Mother-City?1892600

by Richard LeBlanc jr
New Big Dragon Games Unlimited
D&D
Levels 4-6

Azeneth believed the life of the high priest (or priestess) should be as comfortable as that of the kings and the gods. She spoke her contempt for her father’s “weakness” loudly and publicly, almost from the time she learned to talk. As she neared her teens, she made it known her plan was to supplant her father and become high priestess of the temple, sometimes claiming it was her place as the incarnation of the goddess Nekhbet. Many say Azeneth has the power to command serpents, and it was she who sent the asp that killed her father Kemosiri. Regardless, she seized her position as high priestess of the temple and set about her accumulation of power and wealth. Recently, children from the villages around the temple have begun to disappear. Rumors abound that Azeneth is sacrificing them and cannibalizing them because she believes this will make her wealthier, more powerful, and more divine. The people of the villages have begun to refer to Azeneth as the “ogress of Anubis”—believing it was Anubis himself that made this woman mad, and commanded her to consume the children she sacrifices. Someone must end this reign of fear and terror, and try to return the children alive—if it is in the will of the gods.

This is an egyptian themed adventure. It’s a raid on a temple compound to find some missing children. It’s more historically accurate than it is interesting. Or at least it looks historically accurate … since I don’t know nothing about Egypt. It’s interesting to review this so close to Valley of the Five Fires. The differences (dare I say improvement?) are quite interesting. It hits some of my pet peeves, and ultimately the goodies are few enough to make it uninteresting to me. Never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn …

The adventure does a few things very right. It presents the area around the temple, including the villages. Each village gets a sentence or two to let the DM build on. Pretty good. Better would be that there was also something interesting in each village. Maybe you can fix this by taking some of the “continue the adventure” hooks at the end of the adventure and working them in. The temple compound area is pretty nice also. Priests, guards, support staff and pilgrims will around. It’s very much presented as a locale that exists outside of the party … and then the party gets to dream up how they will get in. That’s very nice. It harkens back to the scene in 13th Warrior where they see the camp outside of the cave lair and talk about getting in. I wish more adventures would do this sort of thing. It’s always memorable when the designer doesn’t railroad you into something. There’s other little bits and pieces that also make this nice, like the parents of the missing children insisting on going with you (Fucking finally! You’d think no one in D&D-landia loved their children they way all =seem to usually avoid trying to help you rescue their kin.)

There’s A LOT of mundane magic items in this adventure. It seems like every guard has a +1 sword, a +1 bow and a +1 dagger. And it’s all boring. “they each have a +1 dagger.” Oh, my, that’s exciting. If the need is to give them a +1 to hit then just give them a +1 to hit. “They all pump iron, bro-style, every day. +1 hit & damage.” Don’t kill the mystery and wonder of the magical by making it mundane. In fact, the mundane treasures are are a lot better. Alabaster objects, gold blood bowls, and so on. Very nicely described.

The temple proper is pretty linear and, I suspect, very historically accurate. Historically Accurate does not mean fun. Some of the setups in it are nice, like cages full of screaming children, a sacrifice in progress, and reed baskets with skeleton children in them. The adventure needs more of that … although … even that seems to be missing some … joy? It’s all presented VERY fact based. I like things organized but the text must also inspire the DM and mundane facts are generally not the way to do it. I’m not talking gonzo, or explosion-sounds, but rather a dynamic writing style to bring the descriptions to life.

This isn’t a bad adventure so much as it’s not really a good one. I guess it’s serviceable, but mostly uninspiring.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/116272/TM1-The-Ogress-of-Anubis?1892600

by Stuart Robertson
D&D
Levels 1-3

The Citadel casts a dark shadow from it’s mountain. Can you find a path to the top and rescue your kinfolk?

This is, I think, a one page, that I’m not sure how I ended up with. There’s a certain amount of performance art that goes along with one-page dungeons. “See what you can do in just one page!” You can certainly do a lot in one page, this adventure proves that. And you can do a lot more in two pages. This is, in essence, an artificial constraint on the review. For what this is, a one page dungeon, it is quite good.

It’s in four parts: a cave complex level, a crypt level, a small basement dungeon, and a couple of rooms for a the castle. Twenty nine rooms and four maps is a pretty record for one page, especially given the amount of text for each room. It’s quite the accomplishment and points out just how much bloat there is in most adventures. The jerk-faced jerks who think I want everything spoon-fed to me should instead take a look at this. Focus is what this adventure brings. Classic tropes. I want to point out that the dungeon rooms do what they should. This is HUGE. I think I first time I remember seeing this was in some Raggi thing, although the classic “if you clean up the defiled shrine then you are rewarded” thing is a relative. For example, if you light a candle in the deserted shrine then you are rewarded. Players LUV it when logic works in the dungeon. They get a sense of accomplishment. Of figuring things out. And that’s a Martha Stewart Good Thing.

The first room is “Entrance cave – Illuminating this large natural cave is the lantern from two gnomes looking for their lost companion.” That’s pretty minimal. It’s also pretty evocative. A cave. Shadowy lantern light making strange shapes on the walls. Whispering in the darkness. Two weirdo’s on a mission. Tentative? Combined with desperation? So much is implied, inspired, by the description given. This is the power of the minimal, but evocative, description. It’s not 3 paragraphs long with reactions for everything under the sun. It sets the scene and gives the DM’s imagination a good SHOVE in the right direction. Similarly, room 3 is “Pool Room – This room is lit by a dim red glow from 3 fire beetles on the walls. A Blessing pool contains 12 coins.” Again, focus. Inspiring. Adjectives, adverbs, effects without exposition. And it works the way you think it should. A pool? With coins in it? Well you should throw a coin in it of course … especially in a Level One adventure.

As a basic adventure I think this succeeds quite well. It reminds me a bit of the best parts of the Caves of Chaos. Minimal room descriptions, but with some interesting content.

And because I am a dick, I’ll offer some advice for improvement. This is going to be more nit-picky than I would usually be, but not, I think, uncalled for in a one-pager. It is, in some places redundant. In only one page that can be a missed opportunity. For example, room 5 is: “5. Yellow Mist – a thick yellow mist clings to the ground here. Characters have a 2 in 6 chance of falling in hidden pit.” That’s twice we’re told there’s a yellow mist. Naming the room something else would allow even more imagination. “5. Guano Filled – a thick yellow mist clings to the ground here. Characters have a 2 in 6 chance of falling in hidden pit.” Now we know an additional fact about the room. I’m not suggesting that guano-filled is the way to go, but I would assert that SOMETHING else is the way to go.

There’s also a room or two that is … wasted? “Antechamber – This room is magically silent. These doors are heavy and require an Open Doors check.” Antechamber is not very descriptive. The room being magically silent is wasted because it plays no part. There’s no impact to it being silent. Because of this it’s more window dressing, and thus wasted. Nothing nearby that the silence impacts, noting in the room that the silence impacts. Maybe something like “Unearthly Silence – Highly vaulted. These doors are heavy and require and open doors check.”

Finally, in just one page you’re not getting much in the way of great monster, magic, or mundane treasure descriptions. Thems the breaks … and points out the limitations of the one page format.

This is a classic adventure. I like the classics. If everything published were at least this good I’d be a happy man. All in one page. Reading this, and then going back to look at one of the new 5e WOTC adventures really points out the difference in styles. The bloat present in the WOTC products that adds little to the adventure becomes glaring.

Print this and stick it in your B copy of B/X and you’re ready to go.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/108268/Citadel-of-Evil?1892600

by Hereticwerks
Swords & Wizardry
Levels 1-3

An old plundered tomb where many a grave-robber got their start … now it’s your turn to spend the night.

This is an interesting little thing. It’s a three room cave. That’s 20 pages long. That’s usually the lead in to a Bryce Lynch monstrous ranting diatribe. Not in this case. This thing is like some academic treatise on how to add complications to an adventure. It seems like every possible avenue of additional complications has been added in .. and all in table format. The tabular format allows for quite a bit of additional use. This thing could almost stand in for every adventure ever written or to be written in the “small cave adventure” sub genre. It’s got a big font and doesn’t make the best use of its whitespace, but what it does have is A LOT of those little evocative things that I’m looking for. Those things that I believe are at the core of a good adventure, that a DM can riff off of for hours of content. It could use a bit of improvement in consistently providing those bits … or maybe I mean in consistently making them specific and actionable. The tabular data strays into “bizarre window dressing for the sake of window dressing” on more than one occasion. Those are the weakest parts of the adventure, but there is more than enough in the way of goodies to keep this fresh time and time again.

Three rooms. Each room has a loot table for things you may find. And who you might mind in the room when you arrive. And you might wander in while you there. And then usually something else like where does the crack go” or “what does the obelisk do.” In addition to the three rooms there’s also “the wilderness on the way to way to the caves”, which also tables for wanderers, bad weather, animal dens, and trail hazards. Finally there’s the section on town rumors and guides. Again, multiple tables for each. This is the primary way that the adventure fills those 20 pages and how it fills the role of several adventures in one. The adventure is almost completely table driven and, unlike almost every other adventure that is table driven, does it well.

The strength of the adventure is in the tables, or more precisely: specificity of the content in the tables. For example, there are six NPC guides offered. “Weird Willy. Seems normal enough.” or “That Blakely Boy. Not the brightest, probably not the best, but most folks figure he’s too dumb to lie.” Or Constance, the Harpy with a crippled wing that can’t climb or swim well. This is PERFECT. It’s just a sentence for each but it adds an enormous amount of potential energy to riff off of. This are all examples of the sorts of content I’m looking for. There’s this very small space between “too generic” and “too much information.” The examples I cited fall perfectly into that sweet spot. It’s the kick start the DM needs to get them going and add and build for the rest of the sessions. The tables go on and on this way. It’s wonderful. “Last trip out your guide was bit by a creature they were barely able to fight off. They aren’t sure if it was a lycanthrope or something else.” OMG! I can use that over and over again in an adventure to add life to the NPC. “A dead basilisk carcass, washed out of its burrow. If the lair was occupied then there is a viable egg in the nest …” Wonderful wonderful content.

Except when it’s not. A smaller percentage of the content is trivia. Content which is not actionable, which you can’t riff off of. Ok, I guess you can riff off of anything, but some content is better at this than other. Crystals are “warm to the touch and smooth”, “they appear to be … breathing?” Certainly interesting, especially the breathing one, but much more … high-level? and not quite as gameable.

I might mention that, similarly, the rumor table could use a bit of work. There IS one, which is great, and the core of the rumor content is pretty good also. And it all ends with “Any of these rumors might be true …” Well, now, that smacks of a “it was all just a dream” television episode. Cop. Out. Let me also say that while the rumors are quite good, as these things go, they could be quite a bit better. The last rumor is something like “This place makes a poor hide-out, as three separate bandit bands have learned to their great displeasure and loss.” Not bad. But SO much better if it were conveyed as something like “overheard in a bar: bertie’s boys didn’t come back from the cave last night. Yeah? Clint says Yanys got arrested but I heard they fled after half were mauled in the cave” or something like that. Just a bit more color.

Overall this is a great adventure toolkit. I’d be much happier paying money for this (it’s free, I believe) then I would a hundred other lengthier products.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/131634/GL1-Taglars-Tomb-Revised?1892600