Streams of the Lucid Crack

Posted on July 22, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

pf6

by Paul Keigh
Psychedelic Fantasies
D&D
Mid-levels?

Uh … so …

Go read the review of Dreams of the Lurid Sac. https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=2633

Got it? Ok. This is a less procedural and more accessible version of Lurid Sac. IE: Paul Keigh has sold out. No, no no. Just kidding. He has, perhaps, slowed down his opiate use just a tad, and as a result this adventure is more approachable than Lurid. It presents the same kind of alien environment that Lurid did, albeit in a different form. Both are populated with a host of strange creatures and have large random portions to them. Lucid Crack is less procedural/randomly generated than Lurid Crack is. This is Spire of Iron & Crystal turned up to 12. Just as with the other PF adventures, this could be dropped into almost any type of RPG or campaign and would fit well. Strange, isn’t it? You have to go back to the roots of D&D and by throwing away all convention you finally get to true Universal RPG Supplement products that don’t suck.

There’s this underground complex. The rooms are all made up of 3-d diamond-like “cells”, with an exit on each of the 3 walls. The floor is the same depth below the door as the ceiling is above each. IE: the “doors” are way above the floor. All of the surfaces are covered in cryptic writing. There’s a scree slopes that leads down into the complex. There’s a huge gaping wound of ruined earth running through it. Uh … there’s a great, and growing, deep deep pit in the middle of the complex. Most rooms have some magma wells in the bottom and those have steam in them. THe various rooms have “gardens” in some of them. There are a dozen types of weird-ass creatures roaming about, doing various things. I’m sure I’ve left out about two dozen other things. Summary: It’s a weird ass place that’s been impacted by by several events which are probably not related to each other. I’d like to note that this fact (several events/history) is one of the defining features of several great adventures. From Many Gates of the Gann, to Spawning Grounds of the Crab-men, and maybe even Barrier Peaks, the Bowman map/adventure creation tutorial, and How to Host a Dungeon, the history of place and the impacts of time are some of the defining characteristics of these great adventure locales.

Remember that Lurid Sac review I made you read? For our purposes today you can consider everything in it as also applying to this adventure. Yeah, it’s a cop-out for me to say that. But it also allows me to touch on the differences without having to go explain Lurid Sac all over again. I was barely able to do that the first time. In short: this is a hardcore location-based adventure, ala those awesome MERP supplements from long-ago, but describing an alien environment. The players, through their exploration add the adventure.

Lucid Crack is quite a bit more approachable than Lurid Sac. The transition from a biological environment to a cave-like environment somehow make the comprehension of the product easier. Perhaps because the biological component is removed or because we’re used to dealing with caves & dungeons. Don’t get me wrong, this is a VERY non-traditional cave/dungeon and has more in common with the biological Lurid Sac than it ever would any cave/dungeon, but the cementing of the ideas through a more traditional environment translates into something a little easier to comprehend.

Two other things also contribute to this more approachable nature. There’s a little more purpose in this adventure, it seems. There are some creatures hanging out inside that have a direction relationship to the environment, the purpose behind it. This adds something to the adventure, but describing what is hard. A purpose perhaps? While Lurid Sac simply felt like it existed, this place feels a little more … purpose-driven. That extra little bit, like the non-organic walls, allows you something to hang your hat on and ground you in what’s to come. It’s a bit like someone pushing you at the top of the sledding hill: just a bit goes a long way. Similarly, the side-effect of the environment gives you a good hook. The rooms contains knowledge. By remaining in them you can learn things. (Knowledge skills! Yeah!) But they also learn from the occupants. They encode the knowledge of those that visit. I’m sure you can see how this leads to adventure. Voldemort visits to learn some hidden knowledge and then the party shows up to learn things leaked from Voldie’s head … and then you have to interact with the “owners” to figure out where (and even more to figure out there ARE owners!) and then you need to go do other things for them before they reveal the secrets, etc. It fits in almost any campaign. Again, just a little bit more to get the DM started leads to endless possibilities. These are the little bits of data that I’m always talking about wanting in an adventure. Just some throwaway comments, a couple of sentences, about the knowledge thing, leads you, the DM, to build and build and build on it. It’s a jump-start. It’s what every adventure should provide, time and time again, in it’s pages.

I’ve got one suggestion for improvement, and it’s related to the creatures. The various creatures in both Lucid and Lurid have names that are … almost random? When combined with the hard-core new creatures things can get a bit confusing. I’m pretty sure Psychadelic is committed to now/low art, to keep costs down, so relieving the issue with some line drawings seems out. Somehow clarifying the creature names and their relation to who they are and what they do needs to happen. What’s a Waarfa? Or A Drevod? Or any of the other 10 or so similar random assortments of letters? How do you ties those letters back to what they do and what they look like? I think 1 creature type sticks out to me, and I’m still not sure I can describe it in any way other than its purpose. This is a problem.

Paul’s adventures (Lurid & Lucid) are not the usual 0-work things. You need to read, think about, and plan and note-take a bit. I’m usually not very happy about that in an adventure. These are SO out there that they get a pass. Also, they cost $3. You won’t invest $3 in some of the most unusual D&D content ever published? Really?

Churl.

(Is “Philistine” still acceptable to use?)

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/124917/Streams-of-the-Lucid-Crack-Psychedelic-Fantasies-6?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 13 Comments

The Harvester From Outer Space

Posted on July 20, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

pf5
by Yves Geens
Psychedelic Fantasies
D&D
Fuck it if I know the level. 4-ish?

From the introduction …
As the PCs are camped out one night during their travels, they are caught in a bright tractor beam and with the deafening noise of blaring horns steadily pulled up into the ship …

She’s sweet brown sugar with a touch of spice!

Uh, I mean; this is a couple of levels of an overrun alien space, ala Metamorphosis Alpha. I’m totally in love with that genre, so I’m predisposed to liking this. It could be a drop in for almost any game system, but MA & Gamma World are both lacking a lot of content. It’s the usual Psychedelic Fantasies fare, meaning it focuses on the new & imaginative. Geoff’s PF line is really one of the best lines being actively published.

The adventure is a little ham-handed: you get tractored-beamed up to the ship and need to find the escape. After that, though, the goodness begins. Even if you’re not into Sci Fi in your D&D, this adventure presents itself well.

There’s a type of adventure writing, exemplified in some of the earlier TSR D&D modules, in which the adventure is explained through the room keys. In other words, as you travel through the keys it becomes more and more apparent what the deal is the dungeon. The summary is kind of built in to the descriptions by using the text. It’s nothing overt; you just learn more as more of the “picture” is revealed. This allowed those adventures to have, generally, quite short introductions/backgrounds. This adventure does that as well. The entire front-end is only a half page, and then the keys start. The party appears in room 1 and room 2 tells us that guards, “cronies of new boss Borzum, make money on the side by robbing new arrivals.” We now know that there’s some kind of boss/dictator thing going on, power just changed hands, and things are a bit rough and chaotic. From one short sentence a picture emerges and we view every other room from now on through the light cast by this second room. This is excellent design! No preaching, or monologues, or endless exposition. Just a short little sentence that communicates more to the DM than a page of backstory could. It empowers the DM’s imagination rather than forcing it to conform. This continues throughout the adventure, setting up several situations.

The rooms are imaginative and there are many memorable characters for the party to interact with. “Glorp’s Pad” houses a blob-like thing that loves to have his photo taken with visitors; photos of Glorp with other aliens cover the walls. He sells people jars of his own slime. How can you not love that? Imagine the difference if this were one of the endless number of schlock “standard” adventures. “The slime attacks!” Oh, that’s original. Slime that attacks. *YAWN* You know what’s more fun than a, ogre wearing a 10,000gp crown attacking the party? An ogre with a 10,000 gp crown NOT attacking the party. Every time the party meets this potential friend they are going to be thinking “man, if we had that crown we could pop a level, for sure!” THAT’S fun. The monsters and treasures are unique and wonderful, as they are in all Psychedelic Fantasies adventures. I’d go on about them but it feels like a broken record. It’s one of the core design principals of PF and it’s one of the reasons that the line is better than almost everything else. It brings the mystery and wonder that is missing from the book-standard stuff. The wanderers do things, and the room descriptions are tight enough to use during play while being vivid enough to spur the DM’s imagination: eight or nine keyed encounters per page, including monster stats.

My criticisms may be two small ones. First, it’s 2015. It’s time that the maps were better. I don’t give a crap about art, I want data. Put more data on the maps. I guarantee you I am printing out the map and putting it on my screen. What else can you put on it? Wanderers? Monster tear sheet? Second, there are factions here, at least implicitly. A little more work could have gone in to this aspect. It’s pretty clear that the minor godling and the crime lord/boss may be on different sides, as well as others. A few extra words, at the beginning or in the text, would have done a lot more to build up the real “living town” aspect of the adventure. After all, that’s kind of what this place is akin to. It’s an abandoned ruin that some folks have set up a town in. That’s means it’s a social adventure, and social adventures require a little more in the way of interaction.

Those are not anything other than minor nits compared to the content you get for $3 From the odious potion maker to the gregarious alien who wants to take selfies with you, this thing is a joy. A bit haphazard, but still a joy. Content is king.

I think PF has something like six or seven adventures in the line now. You could buy them all for about $20. It will be one of the best $20 you’ve ever spent on RPG material.

Posted in Level 4, Reviews, The Best | 1 Comment

Dungeon Magazine #48

Posted on July 18, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

d48

To Bite The Moon
by Lisa Smedman
AD&D
Levels 9-12

This is a weird little adventure. In a gnoll cave, with 70-some odd gnolls, the party is turned in to gnolls by a wish. There’s then a little straight-forward cave system. The cave adventure has a nice three-levels-on-one-page map with ten rooms, but the encounters are generally nothing to speak of at all. There’s some snake skins and a lavender mold which is nice, but otherwise it’s just “3 giants in the room” or “a cave fisher.” The noteworthy part of this adventure is that the party is turned in to gnolls in the first room. This is a bit of a railroad, but it’s also presented in such a way that it’s actually the hook … and the hook is always allowed a bit more leeway. There’s a bit if roleplay around this, as the tribe interacts with the party, but it’s otherwise not really a part of the adventure. I find this quite odd. It’s almost like a random event, but presented like it’s one of the chief components of the adventure. Half-measures and potentials not realized.

The Oracle at Sumbar
by Paul D. Culotta
AD&D
Levels 3-6

This is a strange little thing. It’s wordy, convoluted, straightforward, and weirdly enjoyable. Dungeon is full of exposition, every adventure being more wordy, by far, than it need be. This one goes even further though. And yet it’s focused. You’re implored to help a woman with a debt by selling a book for her. Each of the potential places you might stop is detailed. One of them leads to an Oracle. Hiring a ship takes you to the oracle and then on to the treasure of a pirate king. There is the usual “you were tailed and now they pop up at the end.” There is a great deal of advice given. There are a great number of … paths? explored. There’s a great number of small interesting things going on, It is a very richly environment that is painted.That rich environment is always what I’m after, however I’m generally looking for a much terser application of the principal. Given a good read-through I think you could run this WITHOUT extensive notes prepared in advance, or maybe not even a highlighter. This speaks to the skill of the writing, particularly given how wordy it is.

Them Apples
by Christopher Perkins
D&D
Levels 1-3

This is trying to set up a little fairy tale/folklore adventure. Halfling apple trees are poisoned. The cure was stolen by a giant. What follows is supposed to be a charming little adventure, with giant wives & daughters, giant wooden spoons. What we actually get is a standard little giant house layout with the usual things in it. The problem here is that it’s presented as a straightforward “explore the house” adventure when in fact it’s not. While the chief giant is an erudite fellow not inclined to violence, and the other giant women strike generally to subdue, it has no … charm? It’s clear what is SUPPOSED to happen, but it’s all up to the DM to make it happen. Hmmm, that didn’t come out right. The adventure, as written, has a certain tone to it. If you’re familiar enough with folklore you can ignore the presented tone and mold this in to a good adventure.

Melody
By Leonard Wilson & Ann Wilson
AD&D
Levels 6-8

Uh … a small tower with some orogs and ettins in it. The hook is that the party is lured there by an enchanting song. It’s a harpy polymorphed into an elf as a child and raised with no understanding of her past. This is clearly the most interesting part of the adventure. As a nice way to introduce a long-term NPC quest-object it would be great … if a little long. The core adventure is just a throw-away while the “further adventures with the harpy” section contains mostly generalities. Had it instead laid out some specifics then you’d have great advice for taking the elf/harpy NPC and integrating it well and fully into your campaign: lots of hooks, lots of adventures and quest ideas. Instead we get sentence after sentence reinforcing that her voice is enchanting. Ug. And people say _I_ beat flog my grounded horses!

Sleeping Dragon
by Bill Slavicsek
AD&D
Level 6 Dragon

1-on-1 with a Dragon PC.

Honor Lost, Honor Regained
by Paul Hamilton Beattle Jr
AD&D
Levels 4-6

The party must escort a fallen paladin, who’s afraid of spiders, in to a cave with spiders and a drider. That’s it. There’s nothing to do. You get to help a pompous ass. Yeah you! The cave has 5 encounters. All straight-forward spiders. Zzzz……

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 13 Comments

Dreams of the Lurid Sac

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

ls
by Paul Keigh
Psychedelic Fantasies
D&D

Uh … I don’t know if I can review this.

This is a site based adventure with no overarching objectives or hooks. It’s just a place for you to dump into your game. I’m not sure, but I don’t think it’s breaking any new ground in any particular area. What it IS doing though is being committed to a vision. This thing has a core concept and it is FOCUSED on it. Elements of this adventure have been found in other adventures in bits & pieces, but no other adventure has, I believe, put them all together in one shell.

You’re adventuring inside of a creature, the titular Lurid Sac. Remember Fantastic Voyage? The interior sets looked … alien? Weird fibers, colors, flows, creatures. Well that’s what’s going on here. Most of the “adventuring inside a create” things I’ve seen have been half-efforts. There are doors, or stairways built in, or something like that. None of that is in this one. No stairs or doors or comforts of home brought in by travellers. This is a truly alien environment … exactly the way an alien environment should be.

Imagine a hundred overlapping bubbles, on maybe three layers. That’s the map. Where they touch you can massage the membranes to get through. Some of the bubbles have special purposes: the cortex, the mouth, the neck, the “sponges” that allow access to the outside, and so on. The rest of the bubbles are procedurally generated, as are the contents. There are random monsters, events, contents, humours … you get the idea. Most of it is simply enough to handle in practice.

Hmmm, that’s a description and not a review. Ok, review. First, the environment is truly alien. You’re gonna be confronted with having to understanding it, from what’s written, and in relaying it to the players. It should be worth it though; I’m not sure I’ve seen something so alien and so … committed, even with all the bizarro stuff I’ve seen in the 1-page contests and the weirder Finch stuff. This is good. Strange pools of humors, veins of humors, bulging membranes, this should all provide a unique experience for your players.

The creatures, while procedurally generated, are well done. They are, of course, unique. This is a feature of all creatures in Psychedelic Fantasies modules. While procedurally generated, each one DOES have 6 or so activities they could be engaged in. This is PERFECT. It takes, literally, 2 extra lines of text and provides the EXACT sort of springboard the DM can combine with the procedurally generated room in order to run the adventure. PERFECT. I say again: PERFECT. This is a monster table done right. There are also factions, with faction based rewards. The Lurid Sav vs. The Invasives, with the parasites running around on their own. GREAT for launching mini-missions within the environment.

I could go on. I could go on a Lot. This is a fully realized place that, while procedurally generated, brings more … bizarro? than a hundred other products. I’m generally down on procedurally generated stuff, but I’ll take this one.

This IS going to take some work to prep for. A few rolls ahead of time, some monster reference sheets/photocopies/printouts and the like will reduce the page-turning during play. It’s also going to take a STRONG read to wrap your mind around it. That could point to the need for better organization, although how I’m uncertain. The crossover potential, from Rifts to any sci-fi or modern day game, is huge. How many adventures can truly say that?

Like I said earlier, the only new ground here is the commitment to the vision. Because of that there is no letting up; this is a relentless view of an alien environment. If you can handle that then this is a must buy. It’s what, $3? You won’t spend $3 on one of the most bizarro environments I’ve seen in nearly 500 reviews?

You know, when I go to cons I sometimes dig through the used/old book boxes in the dealer hall. I’m looking for some forgotten gem. Something different, something special. A forgotten work of genius. This is that thing I’m looking for. When someone picks this 30 years from now they are stare in disbelief as they page through the thing. This is thick and dense the way Thracia or Dark Tower is. It’s alien in a way I’ve never fully seen before. It’s got the uniqueness in creatures and treasure that Psychadelic is known for. The ONLY downside is the procedural nature, and even that has had the rough edges filed off and made easy for the DM.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/121631/Dreams-of-the-Lurid-Sac-Psychedelic-Fantasies-4?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 3, Reviews, The Best | 6 Comments

The Caves of Ortok

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

co

by John Paul McCartan
InfiniBadger Press
Labyrinth Lord (& S&W & OSRIC)
Levels 3-5

Centuries ago, the great wizard Ortok broke apart his treasure vault and secreted his collection in multiple hidden caches throughout the world. Some of these caches have already been found, but many more remain undiscovered. Rumors suggest that one such cache may be found in some caves nearby. However, that is not all that the caves hold!

This is a short nine room adventure through a cave & dungeon, with the front half being combat heavy and the back half puzzle focused. A sub-par effort in producing an adventure that, explicitly, wants to support the DM during actual play at the table. The “support” seems more like filler, and the actual parts of the adventure that need the designers help are missing. Sometimes, explicitly so. Combined with unremarkable ideas, lots of text, and an uninspiring premise, this is just more fodder for the great morass of “buy 1 get 3 free” vendors at the cons. Content is King … and this has little to none. If I were mincing words I would say that the designer is very unsuccessful in communicating their vision.

The adventure is wordy. Ignoring that, it’s also aggressively generic. Almost none of the descriptions amount to more than “There’s 2 Sahuagin in the room.” Take the rumors: “Pearls can be found washed up on the beach.” or “Many people explore the caves and never come back.” First, these are generic. They are fact based. They communicate no life and no soul to the DM. Second, they don’t really add anything to the adventure. Compare this to Blackeswell. There the rumors guided the party to adventure. But here they are simple facts only very tangentially related to the adventure. Yes, they communicate about the beach and the caves, sometimes. But they don’t do it in a way that adds anything to the adventure, either for the players (“we should follow up on this!”) or the DM (”Oh Boy! Now I can X, Y, and Z!”.) There’s a partially submerged stairway. It’s described as a crude steep and slippery stairway. That’s boring. Dollars to doughnuts the designer had some very strong idea of how this looks in their head. I’m guessing it was exciting. But the language used to describe comes out cheap and uninspiring. The purpose of those room descriptions should be to immediately and solidly build a strong visual image in the DM’s head. The DM’s imagination will fill in the rest once they have an inspired solid foundation. This lays a generic foundation.

Moving on, the product claims to want to support the DM. There are pre-gens. Yeah! They don’t have HP, or spell slots. (Because they are written for third THROUGH fifth level ..) And then there’s the main treasure. The mighty artifacts that Ortok is rumored to have hidden. The goal for the entire adventure. “Gamemasters are encouraged to enter their own treasure here.” There’s a little treasure, like “3d1000 in mixed coins” or “Dagger +1 with a Special Property.” AGGRESSIVELY generic.

Finally, I want to note that there are some puzzles in this adventure. Three if I recall correctly. The adventure makes the fatal mistake, like so many others, of not providing clues. Instead the players must use trial & error to discover that A) deadly stuff ahead, and B) puzzle solution. This is the worst kind of puzzle. It doesn’t support play. People get bored, give up, mess with their phones. Good traps/puzzles foreshadow themselves with clues ahead of time. Both that they exist (“Gee, why is that body chopped in half?”) and in a general line of inquiry for their solution. (“Remember all those murals of Ortok paying a harp?!”) Otherwise they are random. There may be place for that at higher levels, with Augury, etc, but not at low levels.

Ortok, Ortok, See what you have done. You may be dead but the module-people said “Let’s make Another One!”

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/128135/VS1–The-Caves-of-Ortok–Labyrinth-Lord-Edition?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Dungeon Magazine #47

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

d47

Shades of Darkness
by David C. Wright
AD&D
Levels 4-6

This is, essentially, a set piece battle in darkness. The party stumble on village whose manor lord has just been killed. Looking in to the manor discovers a few clues to what’s to come, and then it’s off to a four room cave in the basement filled with Dark Creepers and a Stalker. This is the darkness set piece. A little role-play in the village, a little investigation in the manor, and then a rough fight in the darkness with 1 HD monsters. It’s an inoffensive little adventure. I think I’m predisposed to like these sorts of “one notable encounter” adventures, but dropping it in as a diversion seems simple enough. Also: there’s an odious section where the party meet some people who fight with the flats of their blades. IE: a designer who can’t stomach the consequences of what they’ve written.

Quelkin’s Quandary
by Christopher Perkins
AD&D
Levels 3-5

Retaking a wizards tower from an NPC party. The NPC’s have personalities, and there’s a roleplaying element possible with them. The wizards tower tends to RenFaire wizard rather than gonzo sorcerer. There’s quite a bit of detail, and while I can quibble with the boxed text the content of the rooms are at least passable. The NPC locations vary throughout the day and they have a plan for invasion. There’s a little too much exposition of the tower, especially when you consider the core is the running battle/stealth from the NPC party. IE: this is keyed and described like a typical location and yet the emphasis is not on exploring a location but rather taking it back from the NPC’s. That’s where the emphasis of the text should be, with only the best of the wizards tower details remaining, after a good strong edit.

Smouldering Mane
by Rona Kreekei
AD&D
Levels 7-10

Who likes seeing alignment used as a bludgeon! You do? Great! Better not ignore the NPC Wemics plea for help when he asks in this Side-Trek! There’s a puzzle element, in stopping the fire, a combat element when you discover a fire elemental, and a roll-your-eyes element as the adventure implores the party to recognize the destruction the fire has caused and the need for a create & food water to keep the little animals and Wemics fed.

When the Light Goes Out
by Steve Loken
AD&D
Priest 1

1-on-1 for a 1st level priest.

Fraggart’s Contraption
by Willie Walsh
AD&D
Levels 1-2

This is the poster-child for 2E Dungeon adventures … the good and the bad. The hook for this reads like a Paranoia adventure, replete with experimental devices that may work the way you want. Four pages of hook/introduction, the tinker gnome subculture, each gnome fully realized with personality and backstory, backstory upon backstory. A brief overland with a fully described wandering monster table. All ending in a small 12-ish room bandit cave that takes many many pages to describe. Full detail. Rich environments. Interesting trivia. EVERYTHING spelled out for the DM in detail. All ending with a gnome in an Apparatus of Kwalish. The detail is a mix of trivia and gameable content, but the content tends to be over explained hand-holding. The kitchen table and it’s stools are described, including one slightly higher for a gnome to sit on. WTF is that? Trivia. If you arrive before or after an ambush you get some DM guidelines. If you arrive at the exact moment you get a wall of read-aloud text. Many of the bandits get A LOT of backstory. You can probably run this, with some furious note taking ahead of time. You will probably have fun. It’s unclear though that the effort will be worth it. I like the ‘quiet’ nature of the adventure, the monsters who may parlay … Again, it’s just not clear to me that there’s something of substance here. Like I said, good & bad … This could also be a hidden gem of your game, if you put the work in to it. No thunder, just little works for 1st level adventurers. Kind of the opposite of a DCC adventure; still involved, but not in a gonzo way.

The Assassin Within
by Paul F. Culotta
Al-Qadim
Levels 3-5

This is a sad, sad adventure. You’re supposed to be guarding a university professor from an assassin that is targeting his family. It’s marred by glaring issues. Way WAY too much backstory on motivations of everyone involved (justifying what’s going on in the adventure.) Forcing the party to do what the designer wants them to do. (There can be no appeal to the authorities, the university colleagues, or anyone else.) The usual “the enemy has exactly what they need to forsee every situation the party comes up with so the way I want to adventure to proceed can’t be messed with.” And, worst of all, no real Al-Quadim flavor except for mindless trappings like changing the names of the currency, etc. Finally, the adventure lacks focus. The focus is supposed to be on the cat & mouse game the assassin plays. But then the adventure, it’s descriptions and locations, are not focused on that. It’s all over the place, describing this and that, bits thrown in here and there. Know what the purpose of your adventure is and focus your writing/descriptions on that.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 2 Comments

The Fungus That Came To Blackeswell

Posted on June 17, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

pf3
by Yves Geens
Psychedelic Fantasies
D&D
Third Level?

Publisher’s Blurb: “The inside of the detached cover has the map of the subterranean village of Blackeswell. It’s a site-based module. No quests or plots. The word “Fungus” is in the title for good reason. This is a creepy, mushroomy, fungusy adventure. If you are like me, you love that squishy, slimy, over-ripe botanic feel of lots of vile, rotting fungus in your D&D. This module has you covered. This is the best, most original fungus module of all time. It gave me some shudders. This is definitely the scariest of the three Psychedelic Fantasies modules.”

This is a tight and dense ten page adventure, packed and delivered like a UPS truck. DCC does a great job providing kick ass adventures. Psychedelic Fantasies does the same great job, but in a different manner. Looser and denser than DCC and providing great value, this line brings to life a … freer? form of the game. It describes situations, without the need to appeal to mechanics. As a result we get an adventure of imagination. No explanations of WHY the X is Y. No attempts to describe everything in sight. It IS … now deal with it. This is a refreshing view, and is closer to my platonic ideal of a prepublished adventure than the vast majority of published material. SHOW, don’t tell, is the phrase of the day, and this adventure shows us. Because it shows it supports the DM during during play. “Bob is evil” only tells us Bob is evil and communicates nothing. “Bob is pulling the legs off of a spider” shows us that Bob is evil and tells us a LOT about Bob. This adventure shows.

It’s a village with something going on … a fungus infestation. There’s no overarching quest, or plot, or anything else. Nothing is assumed about why the party is there. You can drop this into anything you’ve got got going on and use it. At best, it’s implied the party has heard about the infestation of fungus and is getting there before the authorities cordon off the place … getting in to do some looting before The Man stops you.

In one quarter of a page we are introduced to the background. In one quarter of a page we have the rumor table. In one quarter of a page we are presented the current situation. The encounter locations start. No muss. No fuss. This is the perfect sort of thing for an adventure of this type. Essentially, you are presented with what everyone nearby knows about the village. Then you’re presented with a series of rumors that can be used as hooks. The innkeeper is a miser with a hoard. There’s a powerful wizard with an apprentice. There’s some high-value mining going on. Once the party gets to the village they can use the rumors as a springboard to adventure. Go find the wizard. Go loot the gems, or the innkeepers hoard. This is gameable content. It’s not trivia. It helps drives the adventure forward and gives momentum. This is so, so important. The rumors, and the background, are directly related to pushing the adventure forward. They point you towards areas of the village where interesting things may happen. Likewise, the current situation of the village provides the general background of the CURRENT status of the village. This part could be slightly stronger, but it does a decent job of laying out the general descriptions that can be used for the rest of the adventure.
“Lying facedown in a puddle of his own face.” Oh my. That’s visceral. The encounters here tend to two sorts. Either they are quite brief, like a burned down oil merchant, or an infested green grocer, or they are more involved. Even the briefer ones are interesting, like the barbershop with a bloody torso, the extremities torn off and playfully hidden around the shop. The shorter ones tend to be a monster encounter (the barbershop) or a treasure, maybe with a tick (the grocer, or the abandoned homes.) The longer ones tend to have something more involved going, and also tend to be Places of Note, such as the Inn, the Church, or the Wizards tower. There are a smattering of NPC’s still around to interact with, rescue, and get help from. There are others that, while lucid, need mercy killing. The descriptions here are all good ones. Each paints a scene, showing instead of telling. They act as springboards to imagination.

As with everything else in this line, the monsters and treasures are all unique. Nothing from the book and everything wonderfully mysterious. The Putrid Supper monster forces rotten bits down your throat, causing you to gag and retch. The magic thimble and needle repairs even magical garments. Blaster rifles blast (and even an NPC has one!) You can climb inside a robot and maybe even fuse with it. There are fungus-ish healing pods. As the tagline says, No Orcs, Fireballs, or +1 swords inside this baby.

On to the negatives, and there are a few. There’s a wandering monster table, and, being Petty Bryce, this is the worst thing in the adventure. It’s just a series of monsters. I like my wanderers doing something, as a kickstarter for the DM building on the action. Petty complaint #2: “Check for wanderers every turn” could be instead written as “Check every turn for wanderers, 1 on a 1d6.” The various ways to check for wanderers is a pet peeve of mine, along with travelling and sight distances in overland maps.

There’s also at least one encounter, a very hard one, that could be telegraphed better. ZOG is 12 HD. Everything in the adventure is bizarre, so it’s hard to tell is bizarro #1 is tougher or easier than bizarro #2. Sprinkling a few dozen corpses around the building should do it. Otherwise it’s a random death trap roll out of nowhere. I’ve got no problem putting in a tough monster or a deathtrap, but the players should make a conscious choice for their characters to engage it. Otherwise it’s random and unfair.

Finally, the map could be better. It’s a simple line drawing on a piece of graph paper, handmade. I don’t care at all about that. What I’d like t see on the map are more … annotations? Sights, smells, piles of corpses. It is, essentially, just a village map drawn in rectangles. There was a serious opportunity missed for the map to add more to the adventure. I’m big on published adventures being a Play Aid for the DM. The map should communicate more than just the numbers to look up the room. This one doesn’t do that.

I like this adventure; it meets my high standards. I’m keeping it AND am a bit disappointed I can’t get these in print form anymore, but must rely on PDF’s. Now the hard part. There’s something wrong with it. I’m not sure I completely understand what it is. I’m generally pretty solid in my opinions, but from here on out in this review you are encountering some assertions that I’m writing down in order to see if I believe them. The room descriptions are dense. They are also shortish. That’s what I want. There is also some kind of wall of text thing going on, if you can describe a four sentence room as ‘Wall of Text.’ Adventure design is, I think, a delicate balancing act. You are presenting as the publisher states “unconstrained imagination” and yet you need to do so in a way that’s easy and convenient for a DM to use during play. Do you need to use a highlighter in preparing the adventure? If so then something is wrong. Usually the room descriptions are full of trivia and you need a highlighter to pull out the one sentence that is critical. In this adventure things are so dense that … I don’t know. My head is spinning. I THINK there’s some kind of additional … organization? structure? convention? needed in presenting the unconstrained imagination to the DM. Certainly, I’ll take this over industry norm any day. Unconstrained Imagination is what you should be paying for, not well organized (ha!) generic trivia.

Posted in Level 3, Reviews, The Best | 9 Comments

DCC #80.5 – Glipkerio's Gambit

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

805
by Jobe Bittman
Goodman Games
DCC RPG
Level 2

Atop the highest spire of Mount Tyche, your patron’s temple is under attack. A demonic miasma rolls down the frost-blasted peaks leaving a vile stench and foul magics in its wake. Winged black creatures roost along the crumbling solitary road to the temple. The bloodthirsty shrieks of snow apes and the moans of the tortured dead echo from the jagged rocks above. Your patron has saved your skin more times than you can count. Now it is your turn!

This is an assault on a time-travelling wizards lair that he’s just recently taken over. I’m conflicted here. What’s present is, oh, I don’t know. Confusing isn’t the right word. Muddled, maybe? On the one hand there’s some great little things presented in this adventure. Some decent atmosphere, a decent set-piece finish, and a couple of decent encounters. On the other hand … I’ve gotten the overall impression that this is a … dull? adventure? Maybe it’s made promises that are not being kept?

The idea is that you are contacted by The Fates. Their temple has been taken over by a wizard and they need you to free it. (There’s a nice bit in there where they give you a bit of thread from the spinning wheel to tie around your finger. Nice way to work in the myth and give things a more folklorish/realistic vibe.) From there you climb up a mountain on a road (or, the hard way) with five-is encounters and hit the temple up top with maybe seven encounters.

There are these great random events on the mountain. “TURN BACK NOW” chiseled into the mountain in giant letters, dead birds raining from the sky, Crimson slush, Art & Crafts messages imploring the party to go back, ala Blair Witch Project stick figures, frozen hands severed at the elbow sticking out of a snowbank with their finger outstretched as if to say “Stop.” Those are all REALLY good little things to drop in and exactly the sort of flavor bursts I’m looking for. There’s also a REALLY nice corpse gate encounter, with severed limbs and a mouth for a keyhole. The final encounter could be thought of as one of those video game Boss Fights: there’s some amount of puzzle going on during the combat but not enough to be frustrating and it’s telegraphed enough (with enough DM advice) to make running it almost certainly a major hoot.

There are two or three things here though that mar the overall attempt. The first is the lack of … theming? This is the temple of the Fates and yet there’s really only one adventure element, a stairway, that brings out that theming. “Not you explore the underwater volcano lair of Abraxis, Terror from the 10th planet!!!” “Uh … Abraxian 10th planet underwater architecture looks a whole lot like a 10×10 grey dungeon corridors …” I might say that it’s an overall appeal to the mundane rather than to the fantastic. This would extend to several (most?) of the encounters. Snow apes throw rocks at you from above. Devilkin swarm you and pick your pockets. There’s an ice bridge where two dudes attack you. I generally summarize a lot in my reviews, but in this case I’m not doing it as much as I usually do. For these “mundane” encounters there’s really not much more than what I’ve described to you. I’m not asking for each encounter to be a stand-alone set piece. But if you take the time to include something then you should take the time to make it awesome, for whatever definition of awesome is appropriate to the encounter. Never in my life do I ever want to hear “Sometimes you just have to fight a couple of kobolds.” No! reject! Reject! REJECT! I never want to see any sign of that, especially in a DCC adventure.

These .5 adventures from Goodman seem of lower quality than the others. I don’t know why. It almost seems like they made a single writing pass through the adventure and then sent it off to the printers. The “awesome it up” pass doesn’t seem to have been made. Maybe these are intro adventures? If so then this is a critical error. Introductory adventures should be THE MOST awesome of your published material. Those are the ones that will get the most exposure and introduce the most new players/markets to you, aren’t they?

Some nice things in this to steal and overall of much better quality than the vast majority of adventures. I’m a harsh critic and some of these “almost” adventures get a raw deal from me.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/134982/Dungeon-Crawl-Classics-805-Glipkerios-Gambit?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments

Dungeon Magazine #46

Posted on June 13, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

d46
Dovedale
by Ted James & Thomas Zuvich
D&D
Levels 1-3

Danger! Folklore! Danger! I Love this stuff to an unnatural degree!

The village stream has run dry, causing the villagers crops to have issues. They want you to fix it. The cause of the problems is a small band of goblins who have captured the stream’s source, a nixie, in order for the chief to better catch a giant talking fish. You see, he’s an avid fisherman. One of the rumors says a local ran across him one afternoon and they chatted while both fished and shared a beer.

OMG! I LUV this shit. A talking fish, a talking owl, and a talking giant rat are a part of the adventure; the local ‘kings’ of the animals. The goblin chief being an avid fisherman is great … as is the STUNNING gold and ruby fly he is tying in his fly vice to help him catch the talking fish. The goblins are old style. Stinkfoot (who has stinky feet), Swoop (who rides a giant bat), fishbelly (who can swim) and so on. One of them resembles a local boy and likes to go into the village and play pranks, and the local boy gets in trouble instead of him. It’s laid out well (especially considering the year), has a decent number of NPC’s, and the text is relativly terse and evocative. It’s the OLD folklore goblins rather than the generic sword-bair goblins that D&D usually presents. This adventure gets a hearty Thumbs Up from me …. uh … I’m not sure … this may be the first one in Dungeon I’ve ever done that for, without reservations?

Anyway, you have no soul if you don’t like this. I’m just saying. You suck if you don’t like this. You don’t want to suck, do you?

Floating Rock
by Steve Kurtz
AD&D
Levels 5-9

As little site that describes a band of bugbears that makes their home on the back of a giant turtle. So many side treks suck. This one has a very interesting bits about sacrificing captives by tossing them in to the turtle’s mouth, but otherwise is generally unremarkable.

Goblin Fever
by Randy Maxwell
AD&D
Levels 3-5

This is a fetch-quest adventure in a plague-filled city that you could mine for ideas. You run around gathering ingredients for a cure while chaos surrounds you. It’s a curious mix of generic wandering tables, string ideas for location encounters, and then too much text as some of the locations are expanded upon. The wandering encounters don’t have enough detail. You meat bandits. Or a mob. Or someone else … with no description past that. The locations seems to expand on the wandering table. You meet a vigilante mob, or a kangaroo court, or a doomsday cult. The shorter ones have enough interesting detail to really cement the encounter strongly in your mind while not boring you. The longer ones go into excessive detail on the contents of a bedroom. It does contain that implied morality I hate so much: no X for killing people who are trying to kill you. If you think of this one as a broad outline and mine it for ideas, and as, say, a piece of inspirational fiction that you can build on, then you could have a nice little thing to toss in to a city game. But there’s work. It would be like reading a, interesting newspaper story and building an adventure from it.

The Iron Orb of the Duergar
by Peter Aberg
AD&D
Levels 11-15

This is a brief visit to a northman city and then an adventure in a duergar mine. It probably has a large mass battle with 150 or so duergar and a set-piece ending. The basic outline is ok. You sneak into a northman city, meet a rebel leader, get betrayed and flee to the mines where they are constructing a giant iron golemish thing that will allow them to declare war on the dwarves. (The high priest is being controlled by a duergar artifact that hates dwarves.) You adventure through the upper mines, meet some drow allies, and then hit a ruined duergar fortress where you have the mass battle. In the lower level you have a set piece encounter when the high priest tries to bring the iron golem to life.

There are some good ideas here. The whole rebel leader thing, and the potential drow allies, the crazy scheme, etc are all pretty nicely done. Even now, a couple of days after reading it, I can remember vast portions of it. That means it ‘stuck’, and that is a sign of some good writing. It’s wordy and railroady, but that was the style at the time. It’s the ‘stickiness’ that impresses me. The core of the stickiness is not even conveyed through the extensive verbiage. The core is communicated quickly and briefly. It then uses a bunch more words that don’t really add much. A pretty decent adventure, given the style at the time.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 3 Comments

Princes of the Apocalypse

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Bryce Lynch

pota
by: A lot of people
WOTC
5E
Levels 1 through 15

The first signs are always small: bandits on the roads, pirates on the Dessarin River, monster sightings throughout the Sumber Hills—all too close to the lands of civilized folk. To top things off, a delegation from the dwarven city of Mirabar has gone missing. Are these events all some bizarre coincidence, or is there a deeper reason behind them? Working through its prophets, the Elder Elemental Eye has emerged to spread chaos across the Forgotten Realms. How will the adventurers prevent absolute devastation?

Life is seldom black & white. This adventure is neither good or bad. I think it’s work, a lot of work. More work than I would prefer, by far. That work could have been minimized with better organization. The grand scope of a single book adventure spanning 15 levels with dozens of locales, the very definition of a sandbox, works against the adventure because of the organization issues.

This is a sandbox adventure, a combination of locations and events that attempt to work together to present a dynamic environment for the characters to adventure in. It is largely successful in what it is trying to do, being roughly equal in quality, and style, to Phandelver but with a much larger scope. As with Phandelver it could use better organization, more DM resources, and less genericism. There is good, solid imagery in this, but there is not nearly enough of it. I’ve seen every version of the Temple of Elemental Evil this one is the best. Probably by far, from what I remember of the others.

Clocking in at 250 pages, it provides an adventure path from levels one through fifteen. It contains some serious background information on the factions and the cult, a section that describes the general region the adventure takes place in, and then three separate bases/dungeons/locations for each of the four elemental cults, finishing up with some side-trek events and cult retaliation events as well as the seemingly required “new monster & new magic items” section. Essentially: background, the region, and locations/events.

Dull Genericism vs. Exciting Imagination
A sandbox needs to have a more expansive view of things. That is, after all, what a sandbox is. But it can’t fall into the trap of confusing that expansive view with being generic. A sandbox has to present many ideas/themes/events/locations VERY strongly in very few words. By cementing core ideas in the DM’s mind the DM can then run with them. If instead a generic environment is presented then the designer has added no value. In other words: I know what a kitchen is like … what’s special about THIS kitchen? While this adventures IS a sandbox, it doesn’t go far enough in adding value to the sandbox.

Let me cite a few positive examples from Princes of the Apocalypse. I’m going to center, specifically, on the air cult. First, the cult gets a great name: the cult of howling hatred. It’s like wearing an athletic shirt that says “Miskatonic University Athletic Department”. If you know then you get it. Otherwise … just another snake cult. Compare this to the Cult of the black earth, crushing wave, or eternal flame. Those SCREAM elemental cult. Howling Hatred? That’s style. More concretely, page 34, in the region section, has a paragraph on the “first” air cult base. It’s Feathergale Spire, a private retreat used by a rich Waterdhavians flying club and their hippogriffs. They are dashing “and given to drinking, singing, wearing fashionable clothing and general revelry.” Just those two sentences are a wonderful description. Given that, and a rough map with room names I could probably fill in everything in their base with almost no effort. Rich, spoiled, preppie, slightly condescending but jovial polo club of 20-26 year olds. That’s the kind of very solid quick hit that I’m looking for. It’s one of the best examples in the book. There’s another example later on where three new cult initiates have been assigned kitchen duty and are found over a steaming cookpot, breathing in deeply trying to “be the steam.” That is GOLD. It’s concrete. You can hang your hat on it. You can build and build and build on it.

On a similar note, some of Adventurer League factions come to life in way they never have before for me. The Emerald Enclave is a great example of this. There are two paragraphs on them. The very first sentence starts: “A widespread group of wilderness survivalists …” Holy Shit! They are the American militia movement! I never realized that before! Now, forever more, the Emerald Enclave has been brought to life in my mind. Not just generic druids, rangers, etc. They are, to a certain degree, nuts. Spider holes. Birthers. Crazy, almost alien ideas that you can barely get a grasp on. Wilderness Survivalists is such a strong idea. The Harpers? They are Anonymous. No real organization and self-declared with a variety of motivations.

The adventure doesn’t do this enough though, and it doesn’t tend to follow through when it does. The Emerald Enclave presented are not given strong survivalist tendencies that would reinforce the initial concept. The swagger found with the private flying club overview is not followed up on in their headquarters. These are lost opportunities to present a consistent, reinforced, strong idea. Instead the adventure falls into generic location and room descriptions. Take this example, which is actually a cut above most:

Ancient Silos
There are two of these rooms, both identical.
“This room is strewn with crumbling masonry. A dry pit lies in the middle of the floor, ringed by a five-foot-wide walkway.”

These two rooms were once granaries for the dwarven citadel, but any food stored here rotted away long ago. The siloo spaces are each 30 feet deep. Other than the possibility of a nasty fall, these rooms provide safe places for the party to rest.”

So … it’s an empty room? If you change the room name to “Crumbling & Ancient Grain Silos” and eliminated all of the additional text then nothing would be lost. There’s nothing special about this room then why is text being wasted on it? There are extensive read-alouds in this adventure, one for almost every room. Almost none of them add any value. They describe generic kitchens, guard rooms, barracks, etc … all in generic minutia. The adventure needs to focus. “Be the steam!” is value. Poncy Flying Club is value. Generic minutia is not value.

One of the bases is a wicker-man type festival. Promised is some kind of hippie festival … I imagine the hippie pilgrims in Conan. That’s one throwaway line that promises that, and it’s a VERY good line. But then what’s presented is far far less than that. Six small groups of people camped out. Where are the farmers & peasants? Imagine the chaos of a hoard of people, an an evil wicker man! But alas, it’s not to be. The monastery base is just a boring generic fantasy monastery that’s actually evil. For the party to think better of the locations there have to other things about it, otherwise anything special is obviously evil. Monks travelling doing good deeds. Their special brews famous in the villages. The lord repairing the keep showing good deeds and protecting things/people. You need build up. The build up is not present.

A special shout-out here to a couple of magic items … which of course i can no longer find in the text. I’m thinking specifically of a dagger, a sword, and a greataxe. The dagger has moon motifs, a night-blue leather handle, and is covered in dried blood. It doesn’t make any sounds when it hit or cuts and can glow blue by saying the word “Rezsu.” This is a great item, the kind of item that a player has their character hold on to long after the +2’s and +3’s come around. This is the sort of magic item I’m looking for. It inspires wonder and feels magical. The sword is less vivid, but is made of dragon bone and glows red when near a dragon, while the axe helps you find the nearest tunnel to the surface. These are not the generic “sword +1” or ring of fire resistance that permeate the rest of the adventure, and other adventures in general. This is the sort of content you should be expecting, that you are paying for.

The Organization of a Sandbox
Published adventures require a very specific form of technical writing. The content must be imaginative, to be sure, but it must also be organized and laid out so the DM can take advantage of the content. This is the long tail of the adventure being a Play Aid for the DM. A superb NPC is of no advantage to the DM if you can’t find it.

The adventure is 250 pages long. There are at least thirteen main bad guy bases, and it feels like two dozen other smaller locales to visit. Dozens of NPC’s. Factions within factions. Motivations. Content. It’s all laid out linearly, making it difficult to find what you need. Dull room/encounter descriptions are something that many DM’s would fix on the fly. Uninspiring content? “A Good DM” to the rescue! The disorganization is solved in another way: a LOT of front-end prep work. Notes. Notes. Notes. I’m sure everyone who has ever run a published adventure is familiar with the prep work that is generally required. WOTC has done a shit job in organizing the adventure … the expansive nature of the sandbox is not working against itself. It makes me wonder if whoever organized this has ever played D&D, not to mention run a adventure from a published work.

What it’s lacking are summaries, notes, and overviews. I’m not looking for twenty thousand words on the cults background. I’m looking for something that tells me how the entire thing is put together. There IS a general overview, and a couple of chapter overviews, but it is, in general, laid out … wrong. I know that’s a strong word to use to describes another’s vision. But it’s also the correct word. The wrong choices were made and as a result the product is hard to run.

Let’s take the Adventurer’s League factions. There’s a quick write-up in the front of the book. In the sandboxy region description setting, which covers all of the minor locations, some have notes like “Boojie Boy, who runs the spud farm, is a contact for the Emerald Enclave.”

Ok, pretty nice. Our factions contacts are scattered throughout the region and the party can get in touch with them. Let’s imagine how this goes in actual play. You’ve met your secret society contact in a confession both. “Ah”, they say “You’re on your way to the town of Red Larch. You can find help at …” … hang on, let me look at the book. Flip through the pages, find a map. What’s on the road from the Dallas Fort Worth water gardens to Red Larch. Broomfield. Hmmm, let me go look up Broomfield. Nope, no Emerald Enclave there. What else. Dragonsden. [Flip through more pages.]

You get the idea. Page flipping, looking for information, hoping it’s where you think it is. Now comes the prep work. Print out a map, mark the faction contacts on the map. Maybe also mark the cult outposts. Write out a page of notes to help me run it. This is what a DM’s prep work looks like, after you’ve read the 250 pages twice through. And that’s for the AL factions. How about the cult factions, which have factions within factions. Key NPC’s? Rumors & foreshadowing? After all we we wouldn’t want to repeat one of the original sins of game design: Lareth the Beautiful syndrome. You know that one, right? In Village of Homlett, a lead in adventure to the FIRST Temple of Elemental Evil adventure published, you end up in a dungeon. At the end of the dungeon, in the last room, you find an evil cleric, Lareth the Beautiful. In all likelihood you stab him immediately. But he’s the evil bad guy. EVerything is on him. He did it all. And you never know. The solution? Going through the adventure and taking copious notes, so you can reference NPC’s during play.

Imagine capturing one of the nameless cult members. You interrogate them. “Who’s your leader!” you scream in their face, threatening fire & torture. “Hang on, hang on, let me go look it up …” L.A.M.E.

One page. One miserable, rotten page. It could have solved all of this. A brief summary of the cult leadership, where they are, and their relations to each other. That’s what I’m going to have to do if I ever try and run this. This is what I mean by the above implied incompetence insult directed at the person who organized this. Pages of meaningless backstory that will never be relevent to play or inspire the DM are included. Meaningless room detail are included. But key reference and summary data to help you run the adventure is missing. Have they EVER run a pre-published adventure before?

Monster stats? Go look it up in the Monster Manual, we can’t be bothered to provide a 1-page summary sheet. Maps? They are ¼ of a page, or worse. If you want to take notes on a map you need to go google/pirate it or figure out how to blow it up on your office photocopier. The examples are endless. Key data is scattered throughout the book, forcing you to look in multiple locations to find everything you need for single locations.

This is a shame because buried inside of the book is the foundation of a great sandbox. Truly open, events scattered in, lots of NPC’s, factions, factions within factions. Almost every one of the locations does not assume combat. Imagine that. A WOTC product that does not force you into combat. You can sneak in. You can bluff in. There are enough NPC’s to make either at least a little interesting. Some of the locations even tell you how the fortress reacts to intruders, or who comes to the aid of who. That’s wonderful. That’s the kind of details that shows someone paid attention to what a sandbox is and how it works in actual play. There are even some evil folk you can ally with. That’s great. That’s roleplaying gold. Far too often they are directed to betray the party, which is lame and reinforces the idea that you should stab evil on sight, but that’s easily overlooked. They TRIED.

In conclusion … I don’t know. I want to like it. It’s better than Rise/Tiamat and I LUV D&D and want WOTC to succeed. I disclose that because I’m not sure if that’s coloring my opinions. The quality of the adventure is not quite what I’m looking for (inspiration & imaginative detail) and it’s going to take a lot of prep work to run (poor sandbox organization/play aids.) If I had to run a WOTC 5E adventure I’d pick this one. If I had the time to “fix” a WOTC adventure I’d fix this one. It’s a solid middling effort with occasional highlights in a grand scope.

This is available on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Princes-Apocalypse-D-Accessory/dp/0786965789?&_encoding=UTF8&tag=tenfootpole-20&linkCode=ur2&linkId=c7cedba1b12dfb11105c5850da53c724&camp=1789&creative=9325

Posted in 5e, Reviews | 19 Comments