tenfootpole.org

by Patrice ‘Kabuki Kaiser’ Crespy
Self-published
Labyrinth Lord
Multi-level

Deep beneath the streets of the City-State of Cryptopolis, sanctuary of the lich-thieves and abode of the Red Goddess, sewers and ancient ruins mingle together into a labyrinth of horrors and wonders.

I wouldn’t normally review something like this but it’s getting close to GenCon so I’m trying to eek out a few more reviews before I refill the review pile at the con. That means non-adventure stuff, older DCC, Dungeon magazines, and probably even some 4e. To get you through these trying times just keep in mind the pile of Frog God, OSR, and DCC stuff that awaits in the holy shrine of the god of commerce at GenCon …

This is a random dungeon generator for solo play. You know those tables i the back of the 1e DMG that created a random dungeon? This does something similar, except it has a few more rules. Campaign rules and the like. The experience ends up being a little like playing Warhammer Quest with the expanded campaign rules in that game. Fun … in a certain kind of way for a certain kind of person. It reminds me a lot of those boardgames that came out at the dawn of personal computers. Super complex and involved boardgames that you could play as a kind of campaign … a genre that TOTALLY died out when people found better solo activities on PC’s.

Basically you create a group wander around town for a few days buying gear. There’s a chance each day that something strange will happen to you. This ranges from goofy merchants to love interests to ghouls or shadows attacking you. Then you proceed to the dungeon and use the random tools to create a dungeon map that you explore. There are a decent set of rules for most aspects of exploration. The whole adventure is predicated on keeping a kind of Captains Log of your adventure. If you don’t write down you are searching for traps then you are not, and so on. Thus over time you get a written record of your adventure. Of particular note is the depth of the traps table and the number of different magical effects that can befall your group. There are also some rules for coming back to town, selling your loot, and doing things like buying a stronghold, getting on the city-council, getting married, and so on. It seems like a decent little mechanic for blowing some time until you die.

It doesn’t, though, seem particularly interesting in the environments it creates. Maybe it’s because I reviewed WMLP #4 yesterday and it had a random encounter generator in it. That one created crazy and wondrous environments that a DM could then fill in. I think I rolled something like a ruined enchanted stronghold with mineral deposits, which immediately brought to mind giant glowing ‘fortress of solitude’ crystals thrusting up through the ruins of mighty stronghold, destroying it. The WMLP table was full of strong imagery that your mind rushed to fill in the details of. This creates rooms with a broken pot in it. It’s not the same. Not at all. Not even close. There’s a great deal of attention paid to the mundane but not much paid to the fantastic. Various lighting types in the hallways. Or the dozen variations of stone and rubble combinations that make up the corridor builds. Oh, the corridor is dark and moldy. Or its got a puddle in it. Oh, I found a hat in the hallway. Great. And there’s a battered shield. Zzzzzz……It’s all pretty generic, mundane, and boring.

I’ll probably keep it around and me and the wife will try it out together as players, as a kind of campaign boardgame. Maybe.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/109821/Ruins-of-the-Undercity?affiliate_id=1892600

by John D. Kramer
Usherwood Publishing
OSRIC
Levels 5-7

… before your eyes a room materializes as sand through an hour glass. But you have a feeling of uncertainty as to where the chamber actually exists. Valen’cya herself seemed to fall into the deepest depths of fear during your battle, just before … just before all went black. And now, she is gone, but the heat of her wrath remains behind. Through an open window you see that your group stands in a chamber, high atop the tallest spire of a castle. At the feet of the castle lay a sprawling port city. Huge it is, yet oddly quiet, and dark, and deserted it seems to be. And then, a disembodied voice chants quietly, and purposefully, but from what direction you cannot tell …

This is a 43-ish room linear railroad through an evil mage-kings tower. It reminds me a bit of Tower of Gygax or a decent little “Let’s go kill Sauron!” kind of adventure. It FEELS like an evil dudes tower, full of ancient evil THINGS. That doesn’t make it less of a railroad though. Kramer admits it’s one in the introduction, and to a certain extent that is required of a tower adventure, but it still irks. BTW: full of ancient evil THINGS also means: lengthy rooms descriptions full of puzzle-like things that will kill you. I’m struck with how similar it feel to a competition module, or maybe The Eight Kings.

In my youth I recall lusting after some of the old MERP products. The Barrow Mounds! Cool! Sauron’s Tower! AWESOME! Cirith Ungol!  Inevitably they did not really live up to the heights my adolescent mind had built up for them. What I wanted, I think, was for them to be like this module, full of the things this module is full of. This adventure contains four or so levels of linear set pieces. Generally a level will be described and it will have some kind of a VERY lengthy thing going on in it, channelling a Kuntz-like depth of things to do. Then there will be five or so “rooms” that are really more like stair landings, on the way down to the next level. The landing will generally have some kind of puzzle or encounter to be overcome, and are generally unavoidable. The final level, the catacombs, has a little more depth to the map, but only a little, and in fact it probably has fewer physical room features than the upper four levels of the tower.

Typically the rooms on the levels have a little set piece full of detail. Hidden alcoves, or niches, locked, trapped, sarcophagus, pillars, torches, and the like.  Braziers summon things, carvings beg to be kissed, colored lights … er, carpets, hypnotize and sparkle. Murals and paintings draw you in. There’s some D&D continuum of Fucking With Shit Gets You Killed. 4E is one end and Raggi’s modules are at the other end. This is closer to Raggi-land but not so far gone as to make playing with the toys worthless. And Traps! OMG there are traps! Chests, doors, triple-trapped … the Mage-King is playing for keeps!

The sub-levels/stair landings are a bit different. From two to three there are nine different landings that must be traversed to get to the next set of stairs down. These are done in order and each is some sort of challenge. These serve as the wandering monster tax and provide temptations for the party to expend resources prior to their getting to next real level and its bounty of Freaky Evil Things That WIll Kill You.

I’m not really sure what to think about this. It’s a better Barad-dur than the MERP one. It’s also pretty linear, some of which necessarily comes from it being a tower adventure. I suspect it a pretty decent high-level adventure, especially in light of the challenges that come with writing one of those things. I think it’s better than 8 Kings, but high-level adventures are sooo difficult to write and so few that I’m not sure how relevant that statement is. It’s certainly an evocative place and your players will remember it, probably more so than a trip to the Tomb of Horrors.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/108888/In-the-Halls-of-the-MageKing-PDF?affiliate_id=1892600

by Gavin Norman
Psychedelic Fantasies
D&D
Level 4 Characters

Each adventure in the Psychedelic Fantasies line revels in unconstrained imagination. Every monster, every magic spell, and every magic spell is a unique and never-before-seen creation of the author. No orcs, fireballs, or +1 swords will be found within. Leave the familiar behind to explore hitherto undreamed of wonders …

This is a 38 room dungeon on three levels of an old wizards lab. I’m torn on this one. It’s full of unique creatures and unique idiosyncratic items, but it feels … cramped? and maybe somewhat forced? I’m not sure what the right description is. Maybe Linear describes it best. Not a railroad, but Linear.

So, big radiant dome. Shifting colors on the outside, a night sky interior, and a set of stairs going down. Mythic Underworld crossover was done better in the first Psychedelic Fantasies module. Inside on level 1 the problem starts to show. Hanging off of the first room is a cryo-freeze chamber and also a great cavern. The cavern is forested and has two smaller caves “mini-cave systems” of three or so rooms each hanging off of it. This is not exploration. The party will, essentially, interact with the natives of the great cavern, maybe slaughter them and maybe make friends with them, and maybe get a key. I’m sure a good DM could milk the locals for some great roleplaying fun, but there’s not nearly enough here. The first level seems more like one of those “Side Tracks” adventures from Dungeon or Dragon magazine. It’s not really much more than a one-trick pony.

Levels two and three are a bit more involved, but the maps really are not. Just a simple branching design. Corridors with halls with rooms hanging off of them. The adventure tries to force room exploration by placing the big treasures behind locked doors. You need to seek out the keys. Hopefully in the process of exploring the party will play with some of the wonders herein and have an adventure. I’m not convinced. There ARE things to play with dials on the walls and swirling clouds of color. Giant crusher machines with some bait in them. Goo balls that turn in to random things when thrown and vats to immerse ones self in. Something seems off though and I don’t know what it is. There’s some gonzo here. I should love gonzo. There’s some OD&D weirdness here. I should love that. I DO love parts of it. The monsters are, as promised, unique and weird. Blobs people/things with objects embedded in them. Uranium Zombies. A giant maggot thing. Weird wands and rings and swords that all bring the idiosyncratic. The items and monsters are EXACTLY what I’m looking for in an adventure. They are strange and unpredictable and new and do cool things and give the players a chance to explore with their characters instead of just sighing at the presence of another +1 sword.

I’ve struggled to write this, as the length shows. I don’t know what going on here to put me off. Individually many of the elements are strong. The maps not great, but that shouldn’t alone result in the buzz kill I feel. There are lessons to learn here. I spend a lot of time talking about unique this-and-this and non-standard that-and-that. The gist being that non-standard magic items, non-standard monsters and detailed mundane treasure are important. And they ARE important, but they are not the end all and be all of making a decent adventure. Neither is a map. Or buttons to play with. Or any of a whole list of things. A lot of elements have to come together to have a decent adventure module.

This thing absolutely has an OD&D feel. But it also feels cramped or maybe limited. I don’t know … the purpose of the review to tell you what this adventure is like and I’m unable to do that well for this one.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/121370/Within-the-Radiant-Dome-Psychedelic-Fantasies-2?affiliate_id=1892600

by Morten Braten
Xoth.Net Publishing
Pathfinder
Levels 8-10

There is a land far to the north, past the black hills of Lamu and beyond the frozen moors of Tharag Thule; a dreary land of mist and thunder, where the white people of Yg have dwelt since ancient times. The free men of Yg tremble when fools dare to utter the name of Arkanth Mal, witch-king of Galuga, for he is the greatest and oldest of the tyrants of this primeval land. And now, the drunken bards of Tartuun whisper, the witch-king of Galuga seeks a new queen. For his minions sweep across the borders of Tharag Thule and Lamu, slaying men and taking only young women as slaves back to Galuga, the Citadel beyond the North Wind!

I have no idea what definition of “Old School” is being used to describe the XOTH products. It’s not one I’m familiar with. This is another bland and flavorless Swords & Sorcery adventure with no goals, plot, timeline, treasure, motivation, or anything else of interest. If you remove the crap you could reduce the page to just a single page.

I don’t know why I review the XOTH stuff. They have cool names, cool covers, and, more importantly, advertise themselves as Old School and are touted by fans as such. Uh … No. The idea behind this adventure is that some witch-king is kidnapping women and having them brought back to his citadel. He’s searching for a perfect body to resurrect his love witch-queen lover. She lives in a box much like the Ark from the Indiana Jones movie and her show owl familiar is flying around. There’s another evil guy living farther north, he killed the chick. Ok, that’s it. You don’t need to buy the product now. You know everything communicated in the product. Oh, there’s a shit ton more words in the product but it doesn’t amount to anything. Just meaningless description with no joie de vivre.

There’s a town that’s described but it has no flavor at all. It might be mechanically correct but it offers little in the way of action, excitement, plot, or anything else. “The North Gate is where men and women from other towns and villages of Yg arrive to barter their produce in return for the crafted items from southern lands.” Seriously? That’s part of the adventure? You’re willing to tell me that the moat is 10′ deep and the palisade 15′ high but not give me something to expand on and run with? There’s a hunter selling a large snow owl with perfect white feathers. Yup, the familiar. But it’s buried in otherwise meaningless text and not expanded upon AT ALL. Seriously, it’s not mentioned anywhere else in adventure. It has absolutely NO important at all. It’s completely up to the DM find some reason or excuse to do something with it. On and on it goes. Boring and meaningless descriptions, one after another. A bar/tavern with nothing interesting about it. Slave traders. A town hall and trading station. BUT IT’S ALL BORING AND MEANINGLESS. “The front door is brown.” Seriously? Why the fuck do I care? The NPC description are even worse. This being a 3e game the stat block is a quarter page by itself, per person, and then there’s some moronic description. I wish I could better communicate how stupid the descriptions are. There’s a physical description. There’s a description of their job. And there’s absolutely no information at all on using them in the game or anything at all inspiring about them or their job. The output from a random NPC generator would have been better than the descriptions included. There would still be no suggested uses but at least they’d have some character.

The actual Citadel has three levels: the Palace, the Prisons, and the Pits. “The Citadel is dominated by the palace of Arkanth Mal.” … With it’s thirteen rooms. “A frontal assault will be a disaster!” What, you mean from the six low level guards that are present in the place? The rooms as so So SO boring. Meaningless description with no flavor and no inspiration behind them. The prison and pit levels, with ten or so rooms each, have the requite tentacle abomination and the by now familiar boring rooms. The final section, the other evil dudes place, doesn’t even get a decent description. It’s just presented as a general outline. Uh … I’m sorry, I thought I was paying you for content. I see now that I was wrong.

I don’t understand this adventure at all. It’s like it wants to be some MERP region supplement in place, presenting things in a kind of non-judgemental format. In other places it wants to be an adventure. But almost none of the content is inspiring. Almost none of the NPC’s have anything to distinguish them. Almost none of the locations have anything interesting about them. It’s like someone tried to make a scientifically/historically accurate Sword & Sorcery adventure and forgot the parts that actually make S&S fun.

This is as bland as bland can be while still containing the number of words it does. As bland as a 3.x stat block, maybe?

You want Swords & Sorcery? Go get that Blood of the Dragon adventure.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/119373/Legend-Citadel-Beyond-the-North-Wind?affiliate_id=1892600

by Patrick Wetmore
Henchman Abuse
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 2-4

The Anomalous Subsurface Environment is more than just robots and lasers — its clowns and dinosaurs, too! Levels 2 and 3 of the critically ignored gonzo megadungeon are finally available — with more classes, more tables, and more cruel and unusual ways to die deep beneath the surface of the post-apocalyptic Earth!

An overall fine product with a lot of gonzo elements. It sometimes crosses the line from ‘goofy gonzo’ to ‘jokey joke’, and those are the lower points of the levels. That’s not too hard to fix though and if you’ve enjoyed ASE1 then you’ll want this also.

Continuing where ASE1 left off, this massive 144 page booklet covers the next two dungeon levels. Each level has about 130 rooms on it, and there’s a sublevel with another dozen or so rooms, and several large portions of the dungeon levels numbered with sub-parts. For the money you are getting A LOT of content here. There’s an absurd number of new monsters, at least 40, as well as new spells, new magic items, new tech items, new wizards, new NPC parties, and even a couple of new gonzo classes, like robot, insect man, or moktar. Patrick brings the content.

The level design here is as good or better than ASE1. The levels are large with lots of sub-areas and lots of corridors connecting them. This allows for a freedom of movement and exploration that most products can’t deliver because of their small/cramped map style. A decent effort is made to connect levels via multiple methods and non-standard paths. Slides, open areas water features, these are all used to connect levels. There’s also a decent amount of same-level stairs. The map does get a bit dry in places and some additional terrain and room features would be nice to see. If nothing else these do a good job add variety to combat. The map isn’t in Thracia/Benoist territory yet but it’s far FAR better than the maps in most products. It also does a good job describing some features of levels not yet explored/seen as well as having alternate entrances to the dungeon.

The dungeon levels have factions. This is a good thing. A VERY good thing. This isn’t just ‘lair’ factions but also includes ‘named’ individuals like The Bonelord or the Dr. Giggles. The various group operating within the ASE, along with the map complexity, should allow the party to approach their problem with varied methods. It doesn’t have to be a pure hack-fest. You can get new hirelings, maybe get some healing or stay the night. Team up with one group against the other, or go get some help to obtain the Amulet of Power, or whatever. This changes the dynamic of the adventure. Not only is the dungeon a dark and ominous place full of things that will kill you, now you have to be on your toes and on the lookout for potential allies and double-crosses. This makes the play far more varied and interesting. Me, I like to make sure the parties allies visibly and ostentatiously display their wealth. Nothing like turning the murder hobos in to murder hobo’s … now who’s doing the double cross Black Dougal? The second level has The Painted Men squaring off against the Necromatic Midgets and the Trogs. These three groups each know some information about the dungeon. What these groups DON’T have, and need are some immediate goals/problems for the party to participate in. They all want bodies, to eat, and that’s about it. Their rivalry for the level, and bodies, is mostly static. It’s referenced but not shown much. COmpare this to Level 1 of the Darkness Beneath where various encounters are with groups of trogs and crab-men fighting, or of trogs just finishing up a fight, or of an older battleground littered with broken weapons and body parts, etc. That kind of thing give you a sense of what’s going on in the dungeon. It makes it seem like the dungeon is alive and that the groups really ARE at each others throats. Level three has cod-men, goblins, a hinge-man expedition and an incursion by the moktars through a new entrance to the ASE. Again, the various groups know things they could share with the explorers but again, they don’t really have many/any goals past “kill the other guys.” If would have been interesting to have a couple of teasers about their plans to accomplish their dominion. “If only we could take the Birthing Pools!” or “We assault the northern corridors tomorrow.” Just a nudge towards some events.

The encounters are good. Laser attacks. A room that replaces your head with a different one. Giant lakes and caverns full of weird stuff. A door with heads nailed to it. An obvious trap with obvious bait (a cod-man egg.) Turning to any page and picking just about any random room will result in you finding SOMETHING interesting to interact with. I like dungeons having things to play with and explore. I like factions that allow you interact with monsters. I like a dungeon with a decent amount of variety and yet enough consistency to allow the players to ground their characters actions in certain sections. ASE2-3 does all that and it does it well. There’s so much stuff going on in this place that it’s hard to focus on individual elements to describe. Beyond the factions there are others in the dungeon. The Sewage Prophet: an otyugh so old and well-fed that he’s prophetic. The Man From Below is some stranger in a cavern wearing trog hides. Tranitaxin the Bone Lord is running around. And the there’s all of the traps rooms and all of the rooms with freaky-deaky stuff for the party to mess with. The depth and variety here is really impressive. There’s a wide variety of things for the players to have their characters explore with the DM. There should be a very healthy back and forth between the players and the DM as their explore black plates on the walls, globes of glass containing screams, and any of the seemingly ENDLESS wonders of the ASE.

And then there are the clowns and the circus. At some point messing around and having fun and being gonzo turns in to a joke dungeon ala Castle Greyhawk. Not Dungeonland-like but “Gamma World powered by 4e” bullshit. I’m pretty tolerant to this kind of stuff in actual play and I’m not opposed to seeing it in a product … in moderation. When a product TRIES to do this consistently then the problems starts to show up. Or, rather, my problem with a product starts to show. Humor as a byproduct is different than encoded humor which is different than a humorous setting. One of the first areas in 2-3 is a circus with clown-people, a big top tent, circus acts, carnies, and booth games. This is my redline that separates goofy post-apoc gonzo fun from jokey. It’s not too hard to tone down, even while running on the fly, I’d suspect, but it does leave a bad taste in my mouth. Getting ripped off by Castle Greyhawk when I was 18 probably has something to do with this, but, whatever.

I do, however, have a pretty decent tolerance for new items, spells, and monsters. I’ve got no problem with a toilet monster, or a Beard of Bees, or any of the other MARVELOUS new items or monsters. They are well done, fit the theme of the dungeon/setting, and are supplemented by a lot of non-traditional treasure, like silver wiring and the like. This sort of the thing isn’t done enough in adventures. Players are TERRIFIED of new monsters. They never know what they can, what they are immune to, if it level drains or eats their eyes or whatever. There’s a new kind of trapper, this one resembling a curtain … or maybe “sewn together skin parts that are being used as a curtain.” Ouch! Likewise the Sword of Unlife, or a solid silver skeleton contained in a red dehydrated gelatinous cube are the kinds of interesting treasure I’d expect to see in an adventure … and generally don’t. Why would anyone ever put in a “+1 sword” when you could put in “Aidru, Slayer of Men. Continually slowly drips blood because of all the people it’s killed.” THEN you can give it a power. Even “+1”. I’ll take the Sword of Unlife and Aidru, Slayer of Men over a hundred +1 swords. Players get attached to unusual and unique magic items, be it their powers or their descriptions. They have their characters hang on to them long after they are useful. That’s the kind of thing you want to have happen in your RPG.

It’s not clear to me that this COULD be better than ASE1. The first ASE was a decent departure from the bog-standard D&D world and contained so much interesting setting information that it seemed like a bolt from the blue bringing gonzo mana from heaven. ASE2-3 CAN’T have the same impact ASE1 had. It does, however, build well on ASE1 and provide another couple of marvelous levels to the complex. I’m a tough reviewer. Don’t let my nit-picking get you down. If you you have ASE1 then you should go get this also. And if you don’t have ASE1 then you are a tool and need to go buy this AND ASE1.

Seriously though, why haven’t you picked up ASE1? It’s one of the best things ever put out by the OSR. Oh, I’m sorry, are you too busy genuflecting to a 30 year old TSR adventure? Look man, I like S3 and G1 also but they are THIRTY YEARS OLD. Expand your world-view a bit. I’ll tell you what: You go get a _good_ OSR product and we’ll consider it an apology for you never buying a Judge’s Guild product back in the day. Cool?

by Benton Wilson
Expeditious Retreat Press
OSRIC
Levels 3-5 (or 1-3, the cover and fist page differ. I suspect 1-3)
The capital of the Venirian Empire has been re-located back to Venir, and a thriving city has been built above the swallowed ruins of the old city. Various connections to the old city can be found in the sewers, cellars, and other underground portions of the rebuilt city of Venir, and adventurers frequently plumb these depths in search of the secrets and treasures of the empire’s glory days. What lurks beneath the Heart of Empire?

Sewers. There’s an attempt at flavor but its sabotaged by a cramped map and the lack of inspiring text. And it’s in the sewers. Has there EVER been a good adventure that took place in the sewers? Ultimately I think the product is confused about it’s trying to be. It’s presented in typical dungeoncrawl format but would be better served, I think, formatted as a kind of setting book for the sewers, or as a more open-ended sort of adventure.

This adventure is quite terse, at only eight pages long. It details a section of sewer under a city as well as a section of the old ruined city that lies under the sewers. There end up being four distinct areas of exploration, each with a hook associated with it. There’s a kidnapper/slaver, a renegade necromancer, a kobold lair, and the old ruin of a small gladiator arena. Each of these has some sort of hook associated with it: kobolds have been spotted, a contract on the necromancer, someones relative has been captured, etc. This leads to the map problem: all of these guys lair within 200 feet of each other, and usually much closer. The map is small. Quite small; at about a quarter of one page. This leaves the whole thing feeling strangely disconnected from each other. A larger complex map could have been much more interesting. Then the players have a reason to talk to the kobolds, or make an alliance with the slaver, or something else that would turn this adventure away from a single lame crawl to a more involved focus point and place of interest in their travels. By opening it up and providing a little more motivation for the groups then you’d have a kind of faction play available. This could lead to continuing relations with the various groups and a real opening up of the play in the undercity. Instead this looks like a typical crawl.

It tries. There’s thugs in the sewers, and skeletons risen up from the ruins of the old city. There’s disgraced gladiators trying to regain their glory wandering around and there are escaped slaves begging for help. There’s a monkey-ghoul and a weird undead guy with flaming blue hands and a door decorated with an animated skeleton. There are peasants set up as watchmen by the city and weird skeleton with strange powers. But these are the exceptions. The 47 or so encounters in the sewers tend to be of the Boring Room with Boring Contents variety. The rooms have very little going on in them and what there is described in a mundane and uninspiring way. What I’m looking for in a room description is something short but evocative that can communicate the room to me and let fill in the details myself. I’m not looking for an exhaustive list of the rooms contents. If it doesn’t inspire then it should generally be cut out. The kobold lair is a good example of this. There are eight or nine rooms taking up a page or so that describe the kobold lair/rooms. Almost none of the text adds anything to the room title. “Half-built tunnel” is fairly good, as is “Kobold Chokepoint” The additional text, a paragraph or so, does little to add to the rooms beyond the description that I could not. Inspire or Edit! In contrast the treasure is not bad. “a gold comb”. “an amulet with a glass bead on the end.” Not quite the level of detail I appreciate but at least an attempt was made. What if the comb had a dolphin on one end in a lewd pose and the amulet was black and white painted silver in a kind of ‘locket’ format with the bead inside? The magic items are of the “+1 sword” variety, and this do nothing to add to the flavor. Listen kids, if it’s in the core books then why am I paying you for the trouble of copying the text back to me?

Expanded on to a larger map with more motivations for the various groups and a longer adventure could turn this in to an interesting adventure. But by that time you might as well rewrite the entire thing. The Jakallen Underworld still does this sort of thing best.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/104141/Advanced-Adventures-25-The-Heart-of-Empire?affiliate_id=1892600

by Paul J. Fini
IndieOnly Comics
OSR D&D
Levels 1-3

An ancient outpost, abandoned centuries ago by a empire in decline, sits atop a lonely hill overlooking a bleak wilderness. Why was it deserted and left unattended all those years? Surely treasures that once littered the courtyard must have been claimed long ago. But still… vague murmurings of a hidden cellar have been overheard as well as visions of long dead veterans still haunting the battlements. Surely tales told in the evening in front of a fire to frighten gullible travelers. Perhaps there is something more here than meets the eye?

This is a small four level dungeon with around seventy rooms in it. It uses a lot of fairly common tropes: orcs, goblins, kobold slaves, a forgotten tomb, etc. There is not much in the way of originality. It’s large enough to get your EXPLORE on and doesn’t offend enough to make me loathe it. It reminds me a lot of a ‘normal’ adventure.

I’m having a hard time with this one. It’s easy for me to rant about things I loathe, like the OCD crowd on BGG. It’s easy for me to be incoherent with excitement and praise when I find something I like. The middle is where I have a hard time. This thing lies in the middle. Since most adventures seem to suck it also means that this adventure is better than most. “Sucks less than most” is not exactly praise. Put another way, I’d be happy if this level of quality was the baseline by which adventures were measured, instead of 90% of the stock being crappy.

The two pages of introduction can mostly be skipped. The background is short but there’s a decent amount of notes and introduction type material. Perhaps the only really good advice is “the ruin was built by a foreign power. Consistently describe its features as being foreign feeling.” THe four levels of the ruin consist of the ground level ruins, the basement of the ruins, the dungeon below the basement, and the “Caves of Peril and Tomb of the Forgotten.” Man, that’s a level name right out of Holmes/Moldvay! The surface ruins are generally nothing special. They essentially serve as a warm-up and teaser for the lower levels. Some of it is done well and some of it isn’t. There’s a rooftop for the group to climb up on and look down in to things. That’s good. The concept of varying elevations and an environment that allows players to better utilize their surroundings, like climbing up, is something more adventures should allow for. The wandering monsters also contribute to the kind of build-up of tension on this level. Wolves howling in the distance, strange sounds, ominous ravens … this, combined with the “mundane” nature of the well-looted ground level is going to leave the party guessing what is actually going on in the adventure. Some clues in the form of weakened ladders, and perhaps some pets left behind, should also raise tension a decent amount. SOMETHING is present, but the group won’t really know what. Three trapdoors to the roof, it’s open nature, and three stairs down to the basement allow for a non-typical number of ways between levels.

Time for the exciting reveal in the basement! Well, not quite. The basement begins to introduce more creatures, notably undead, with more clues that something larger is going on here. Finally the players will reach the Lower Level and things fall apart. The map here is large, relatively interesting in its non-linear nature, and is stuffed with orcs, goblins, kobolds, and ogres. Room after room. For the most part the rooms are not interesting at all. Their descriptions tend to be longish and end up amounting to “nothing interesting except a couple of humanoids.” For example, the toilets have an orc in them, but it takes a decently sized paragraph to explain that. This is not an uncommon example but rather the norm. For a fully developed humanoid lair like this I like to see an Order of Battle; a list of which monsters will respond to alarms and how they react, etc. This keeps me from having to dig through room after room looking for numbers, stats, etc. While it’s suggested the humanoids react realistically there’s nothing more given. This means more prep time for me and, after all, I’m getting the adventure so I don’t have to worry about prep time. The Caves of Peril and Tomb of the Forgotten are a major let down. Just four or five cave rooms and two tomb rooms. Shriekers, pools of water, grey ooze, wights … nothing really special or interesting here. The treasure is mostly monetary with a few tapestries and the like to pilfer. Enough to keep it a bit interesting. The magical loot is boring book items with not much detail, description or flavor behind them. The only real exception if a Cleaver of Culinary Arts wielded by an ogre chef.

I suspect this adventure plays fine. It you wanted a vanilla adventure and were allergic to D&D’s weirder (and, IMO, fun) parts then this would be a good choice for you.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/89988/The-Outpost-On-The-Edge-Of-The-Far-Reaches?affiliate_id=1892600