tenfootpole.org

by James Edward Raggi IV
for Lamentations of the Flame Princess
LotFP
1st level fans of Hostel Movies

Love inspired the gift. The gift kills. Death by love.

This thing has a lot of VERY graphic imagery in it. It’s more appropriate for a horror campaign … as opposed to sitting around with your pals drinking, laughing and killing shit. Then again, maybe you like to sit around and drink and laugh while exploring emo Forge crap.

Things start out well enough: The players overhear some people talking. Rumor has it that a wealthy estate just outside town has been abandoned. A gang of thieves is organizing to hit it tomorrow night … That is a GREAT hook. There’s loot and we need it before someone else does! It’s relatable and should motivate the players well to get their asses going TONIGHT in order to hit the place. This is combined with a great little rumor table section. There’s only about twelve entries but it’s very well done.

The adventure takes place on an estate. Besides the grounds and the main house there are also a couple of outbuildings. There might be just over 30 locations in total, with 23 or so being in the main house. The room descriptions could be laid out a bit better. There’s generally some combination of a normal description, treasure, the occupant, and the freaky shit in it. It’s presented as a text block but could be laid out a bit better to make referencing the room better during play.

As with most Raggi adventures the goal is to get in, grab as much treasure as possible, and not die. To that point: there are four main enemies and a possible horde of undead. The four enemies are mobile and there’s a chart to determine which part of the estate they start in, although no real direction on how/when they move about. I’d probably just let the dice fall where they may and leave them in their location until they potentially chase the party. That’s pretty much the adventure. Avoid/fight the four baddies while trying to find as much loot as possible in a four story townhouse. Oh, and the grounds and house are filled with gore and abominations.

Yes, we can’t forget to mention that; it’s the main point of the adventure. As the party explores they are going to be witness to some scenes of unbelievable mutilation and gore. If the party explores the grounds first, maybe casing the house, then there will be a slow build up. Lots of blood, mutilated bodies, etc, all appearing kind of out of nowhere. By this I mean, for example, that everything appears normal UNTIL you stumble over the body/gore/etc. It’s a juxtaposition, see? The gore gets more bizarre and more graphic in the main house. One of the enemies is a naked man that shoots black goo from his cock. Another is a naked old woman who has replaced her nipples with her eyes and keeps her weapons in her vagina. Oh, and then there’s the naked woman who’s miscarried/undead fetus drags her around by the umbilical cord. Besides these wonders there are also a nice assortment of dead bodies mutilated in interesting ways and a couple of people who are still alive but horribly mutilated … usually with their intestines hanging out.

Raggi claims he put the most whacked out shit he could in the module as a kind of statement. What kind of person are you, Mr PC, that endures witnessing/encountering all of this stuff just in order to get a little cash? He also offers advice to the DM: keep everything bland and normal with your descriptions of the gore, etc. Until a living victim is met, and then really play up the agony, etc. Keep a straight face, don’t show emotion. EVen if the players are joking around then maintain a somber mood in order to bring them down. Wonderful; a module as performance art.

Once upon a time I used the CoC adventure “Loves Children Lost” from The Stars are Right for a Lacuna game. It’s a Call of Cthulhu adventure that deals with drug abuse, incest, child abuse, porn, and a whole bunch of other fun shit. It worked great, almost unchanged, as an adventure set in humanities shared subconscious. Death Love Doom would work well for that also, or any horror type game. It’s very graphic and explores the very nature of what it means to be a murder-hobo. You go somewhere to rob people, and perhaps kill them, and in return you’re willing to put up with all of the horrible things in this adventure in order to profit. As subtle as a hammer to the head. Of course, I don’t play fucking emo Forge games. I’m not particularly interested in exploring the nature of mans inhumanity to man or the depths to which a person will go in order to liberate a few coppers for power/XP. I could see lifting some bits of this for a fantasy game: the hook, the monsters, etc, but taken as a whole product this just isn’t D&D. It’s Forge or maybe hardcore modern CoC.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/104807/Death-Love-Doom?affiliate_id=1892600

by Daniel Proctor
for Goblinoid Games
Labyrinth Lord
1st Level Characters

Legends of the dark-hearted sorcerer Sigydel around in the local town, despite the fact that he has been dead for centuries. His evil exploits are the topic for many late night fireside stories, and to this day the townspeople often paint a red eye above their doors to ward off Sigyfel’s evil spirit …

Different standards for free products?! BAH! This is a small tomb with 10 rooms that just about fits the profile of a one-page dungeon .. except it’s three including cover page and OGL.

A dead body has turned up on the road, it’s face frozen in terror, and the party is expected to investigate on their own, or get hired by the mayor for 300gp to investigate. That’s a pretty bland hook for what, I assume, is a product intended to get people excited about Labyrinth Lord. I generally find that motivating the PLAYERS rather the CHARACTERS is the key to getting things off to a good start. Sometimes you can do this with a decent bit of fire & torture on the villains part and sometimes you can do it by dropping some !!SERIOUS L00T!! rumors in town. I recall one group following a drunk farmer out of the tavern, confronting him, and then chasing him when he ran off. They shot him in the leg with a crossbow and *ahem* applied pressure, in order to learn more about the !!SERIOUS L00T!! he implied was nearby. Now THAT’S a group of motivated players!

The only wandering table is for the countryside on the way to the tomb. Wanderers only show up in the wilderness. And at night. And you only roll once. And they only show up on a roll of ‘1’ on a d6. Uh … it strikes me that the inclusion of a wandering table may not have been warranted. The dungeon has ten rooms. There’s an entry hallway that divides in to three corridors. The dungeon has two traps, neither of which is likely to be avoided, and three monster encounters. Skeletons, Orcs & an evil cleric, and a ghoul. Each room has a 2-3 sentence description which is just about as generic as the hook. There’s absolutely nothing here of interest. It’s just about an unimaginative of an adventure as you can possible generate. “The doors to this room are locked and it’s full of wooden debris.” or maybe “the room has rotted silks and tapestries and a table with a box on it.” I like a terse description but I DO expect the text to provide a bit of inspiration. There’s nothing inspiring here at all. It’s a static place with generic monsters just sitting around in their generic rooms waiting for the party to kill them. At least there’s no plot.

This is meant to be a kind of introductory product. Giant stone ape heads shooting red disintegration beams out of their eyes, and brains in jars that grow tentacles, and reprobate wizards … that’s the kind of stuff that make D&D a game of legends and stories. Not an empty dusty room.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/57863/The-Tomb-of-Sigyfel?affiliate_id=1892600

by Geoffrey McKinney
for Lamentations of the Flame Princess
LotFP/D&D
Wilderness Hex Crawl

This is a hex crawl. AFAIK, there are only two extensive examples of hex crawls: The Wilderlands series and Staters NOD/Hex Crawl Classics line. It’s inevitable that any hex crawl will be compared to these, especially Wilderlands. I love hex crawls for their adventure seeds and I was struck by just how different I found Isle of the Unknown to be from Wilderlands and Stater. I like a lot of the ideas that Geoffrey produces … but I didn’t find Isle to be very useful.

There’s a definite OD&D vibe in Isle that I can get in to, but it is overshadowed somewhat by the formulaic entries. Two types, in particular, stick out and are what got me thinking about other hex crawls in comparison. There are giant hybrid monsters on the Isle as well as magic-users. Individually these encounters suffer from what I’m going to talk about later, but taken together they get formulaic. “Oh, gee. look, another giant hybrid monster. Ho hum.” A giant four-legged eagle who’s body is covered in feather faces. An 8′ tall humanoid swan with three human faces on its chest. A 240# giant mantis walking on its hind legs. A 4-legged pigeon the size of a large dinosaur. The book is relentless in the appearance of giant animal hybrids. They get a little “all the same” after awhile. Hmmm, or maybe “anticipated and therefore boring.” is a better way to describe it. Also along for the ride are the magic-users. Basically, a random person you run in to is a magic-user with weird powers, and probably some animal buddies. It seems like there are A LOT of these guys. I like a good OD&D magic-user but between them, the giant animal hybrids, and the statues things get REALLY repetitive.

What I’d really like to talk about though is the way the various hexes/encounters are presented in Isle. Here’s a typical entry from three hex crawls: Isle of the Unknown, Wilderlands of High Fantasy, and Staters HCC1 – Valley of the Hawks.

Isle: “Orchids grow from the rumps of squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, etc that are prolific in these woods.”
Isle: “A 6′ tall wolf-man slithers on the ground, moving with its arms. It has antlers on its head.”
Isle: “A 7′ long caterpillar has skin made of metal. It can crawls on the walls and ceilings as easily as the ground.”

Wild: “Abode of four huge ogres which relish human flesh. Every ogre has 3 eyes and flaming hair. A pet giant crocodile follows them to feast on their leavings.”
Wild: “3 Harpies harass 12 dwarves on this rocky land fall. Unknown to all except 1, a yawning cave is the treasure trove of pirate. 3 chests are guarded by 4 skeletons.”
Wild: “A blackened Great Keep whose roof has caved-in and the gates have rotted down, provide shelter for four giant pigs.”

HCC1: “There are a number of tall conical spires here topped by large balancing stones. If the stones are removed then thousands of mechanical locusts will pour from the spires and descend on the Valley, making it a wasteland until stopped.”
HCC1: “An old, grey horse wanders this area, grazing on the grasses and accompanied by twenty zombies in leather harnesses and carrying barbed spears. The zombies were under the command of the necromancer Bethnay, whose body is still dragged by the horse after a fall cracked open her skull. The zombies accompany their mute master, waiting for new orders. The remains of Bethnay still hold a treasure map in one boot.”
HCC1: A small village of ancient men in his hex is plagued by pixies. The woodsmen live in leather tents surrounded by a thicket. They are tall and thin, with golden skin, reddish-brown hair and long noses. The men are bison riders, capable of communicating with and controlling not only their bisons but all mammals. They wield throwing clubs called knobkerries and long, serrated daggers and wear leather armor.

Stater is certainly a bit longer, but not nearly 3.x “we pay by the word” length. Ignoring length, the HCC hexes give you a decent little encounter to flesh out and its readily apparent what’s going on. There’s something strange in the hex and there’s something strange going on with it. Wilderlands has decent little setups also. The harpies and dwarves encounter is a good example. There’s enough information there to flesh out and run an encounter. “There’s an X here and Y is going on.” The Isle examples are different though. They name something, and do little more. “There is a book in this hex.” or something similar. There’s something missing. The description needs more to turn it from being a THING and in to the basics of an encounter.

Oh, and while it’s gouche to do so in another mans review, I encourage folks to check out Staters Land of Nod (Lulu print and PDF) and Hex Crawl Classics (Frog God Games print and PDF) lines. He’s one of the best producing work today, and also one of the less visible.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/97687/Isle-of-the-Unknown?affiliate_id=1892600

by Geoffrey McKinney
for Lamentations of the Flame Princess
LotFP/D&D
Wilderness Hex Crawl
This is a hex crawl. AFAIK, there are only two extensive examples of hex crawls: The Wilderlands series and Staters NOD/Hex Crawl Classics line. It’s inevitable that any hex crawl will be compared to these, especially Wilderlands. I love hex crawls for their adventure seeds and I was struck by just how different I found Isle of the Unknown to be from Wilderlands and Stater. I like a lot of the ideas that Geoffrey produces … but I didn’t find Isle to be very useful.

There’s a definite OD&D vibe in Isle that I can get in to, but it is overshadowed somewhat by the formulaic entries. Two types, in particular, stick out and are what got me thinking about other hex crawls in comparison. There are giant hybrid monsters on the Isle as well as magic-users. Individually these encounters suffer from what I’m going to talk about later, but taken together they get formulaic. “Oh, gee. look, another giant hybrid monster. Ho hum.” A giant four-legged eagle who’s body is covered in feather faces. An 8′ tall humanoid swan with three human faces on its chest. A 240# giant mantis walking on its hind legs. A 4-legged pigeon the size of a large dinosaur. The book is relentless in the appearance of giant animal hybrids. They get a little “all the same” after awhile. Hmmm, or maybe “anticipated and therefore boring.” is a better way to describe it. Also along for the ride are the magic-users. Basically, a random person you run in to is a magic-user with weird powers, and probably some animal buddies. It seems like there are A LOT of these guys. I like a good OD&D magic-user but between them, the giant animal hybrids, and the statues things get REALLY repetitive.

What I’d really like to talk about though is the way the various hexes/encounters are presented in Isle. Here’s a typical entry from three hex crawls: Isle of the Unknown, Wilderlands of High Fantasy, and Staters HCC1 – Valley of the Hawks.

Isle: “Orchids grow from the rumps of squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, etc that are prolific in these woods.”
Isle: “A 6′ tall wolf-man slithers on the ground, moving with its arms. It has antlers on its head.”
Isle: “A 7′ long caterpillar has skin made of metal. It can crawls on the walls and ceilings as easily as the ground.”

Wild: “Abode of four huge ogres which relish human flesh. Every ogre has 3 eyes and flaming hair. A pet giant crocodile follows them to feast on their leavings.”
Wild: “3 Harpies harass 12 dwarves on this rocky land fall. Unknown to all except 1, a yawning cave is the treasure trove of pirate. 3 chests are guarded by 4 skeletons.”
Wild: “A blackened Great Keep whose roof has caved-in and the gates have rotted down, provide shelter for four giant pigs.”

HCC1: “There are a number of tall conical spires here topped by large balancing stones. If the stones are removed then thousands of mechanical locusts will pour from the spires and descend on the Valley, making it a wasteland until stopped.”
HCC1: “An old, grey horse wanders this area, grazing on the grasses and accompanied by twenty zombies in leather harnesses and carrying barbed spears. The zombies were under the command of the necromancer Bethnay, whose body is still dragged by the horse after a fall cracked open her skull. The zombies accompany their mute master, waiting for new orders. The remains of Bethnay still hold a treasure map in one boot.”
HCC1: A small village of ancient men in his hex is plagued by pixies. The woodsmen live in leather tents surrounded by a thicket. They are tall and thin, with golden skin, reddish-brown hair and long noses. The men are bison riders, capable of communicating with and controlling not only their bisons but all mammals. They wield throwing clubs called knobkerries and long, serrated daggers and wear leather armor.
Stater is certainly a bit longer, but not nearly 3.x “we pay by the word” length. Ignoring length, the HCC hexes give you a decent little encounter to flesh out and its readily apparent what’s going on. There’s something strange in the hex and there’s something strange going on with it. Wilderlands has decent little setups also. The harpies and dwarves encounter is a good example. There’s enough information there to flesh out and run an encounter. “There’s an X here and Y is going on.” The Isle examples are different though. They name something, and do little more. “There is a book in this hex.” or something similar. There’s something missing. The description needs more to turn it from being a THING and in to the basics of an encounter.

Oh, and while it’s gouche to do so in another mans review, I encourage folks to check out Staters Land of Nod (Lulu print and PDF) and Hex Crawl Classics (Frog God Games print and PDF) lines. He’s one of the best producing work today, and also one of the less visible.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/97687/Isle-of-the-Unknown?affiliate_id=1892600

by James Edward Raggi IV
for Lamentations of the Flame Princess
Lamentations of the Flame Princess/D&D
levels 0 to infinity

In the center of a valley that should not be stands a thing that cannot be. Those that go before the Monolith do not return the same as they left. Sometimes they do not return at all.

You see that level rating up there? 0 to infinity? That tells you all you need to know: this is a movie and not an adventure.

Some people don’t like this adventure because it’s deadly. I don’t like it because it’s boring. There’s not enough here to keep a parties interest and while I don’t mind killing characters I DO mind boring the players while doing so. It’s the worst sort of Jr High adventure … without the gonad monsters that kept Jr High games interesting.

So there’s this valley with mist in it. The valley is big. How big? Between 200′ and 1000 AU. Each time you enter the valley it’s a different size. Weeee! Isn’t that freaky?! IS YOUR MIND BLOWN?!!? Oh yeah, oh yeah … well, every time you enter the valley something random happens to to! You might loose a stat point a day, or time might slow down or speed up! BADD ASS, RIGHT!!! uh … right? FREE YOUR MIND MAN!

FREE!

YOUR!

MIND!

During your exciting stay in the valley there is a 1 in 6 chance per day of having an encounter. There are then seven possible encounters. You could be surrounded by spooooooky mists that transport you elsewhere in the valley! CHILLING! You could encounter a cliff that you have to jump off of in order to survive! That’s right man! Spells and ropes and shit will just get you killed! This is THE VALLEY and shit don’t work the way you think here! *BAM* MIND FUCK! Oh, you encounter a nice little pool of water??!?GIANT ANGLERFISH! *MINDS* *BLOWN*

All of that is NOTHING man, nothing! It’s just a warm up to the real mind fuck! Once you get inside the monolith the real mind fuck fest begins! Time and space are one! You can Direction and distance have no meaning in the hallways! You have to *think* where you want to go and then you’re there! G E N I U S! Those aren’t talls man! Go back and get talls!

Whoops. Ok, I clearly can not keep this up.

The valley can be very big and yet there are only 7 possible encounters. Combined with the infrequent appearance there’s going to be a whole lot of nothing going on. The encounters are generally nothing special, with a single exception, and in one case is a great example of how NOT to run an encounter. There are some Eloi-like people who live a completely innocent and hedonistic lifestyle … and also eat their newborns. That’s a pretty decent little encounter. Then there’s the owl encounter. Essentially the players are trapped in a clearing with some owl statues, trapped by brambles that grow back quickly. The DM’s instructions are to keep the players there until they are creeped out and then let them out. I wouldn’t be creeped out. I’d be frustrated and bored.

The interior portion of the monolith is much like the exterior, random for no reason. You move by thinking and your thoughts create things. The only thing interesting is the head in a jar. Eating bits of its brain will get you some goodies/effects. Otherwise it’s just more of the same. Think about something and it appears until your players are bored and it’s time for the adventure to be over.

This sort of thing appears several times in the adventure. Things are freaky just for the sake of being freaky. They are random for the sake of being random. They try too hard and as a result the entire thing plays out like one of the bullshit dream-sequence adventurers where the players end up not caring about what happens. At some point in this adventure the players are going to figure out that there’s no reason and at that point the adventure might as well be over. Uh … except you’ve now got a bunch of players who have lost trust in you.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/104805/The-Monolith-from-beyond-Space-and-Time?affiliate_id=1892600

by Gabriel Brouillard
for Rogue Games
Shadow, Sword & Spell

Covering most of this land is a thick jungle called the Pashuvanam, or Jungle of Beasts. The jungle deserves its name. Fierce monsters and animals plague Beidhanids and Nipuans alike, sometimes destroying entire villages. Over the last few centuries, most of the dangerous creatures have been driven away from major settlements and main roads, giving the inhabitants a sense of security. Still, stories of unspeakable horrors lurking in the jungle’s depth persist—and are regularly proven true. What evil lurks under the lush?
I like a certain style of D&D. I don’t like the style of D&D, or RPG’s in general, that this adventure represents. This adventure takes place in a West Asia/India setting. It’s meant to be a pulpy human-centric world. It’s organized in a chronological flowchart style and, while full of fluff, offers little in the way to motivate the players. The game system is NOT a D&D clone.

This takes places in a pseudo-historical red-dot indian setting and is FULL of superficial cultural references. Castes, cults, language and culture all combine to give that superficial feeling of a pasted-on theme in which to set an adventure. The explanation for many things in this adventure turns out to be “its a cultural thing.” A huge number of words are spent on various cultural themes which are then generally ignored except when used as a pretext for some hook. Castes, in particular, receive lengthy and frequent mention and yet they really only show up in play twice: once to kick off the adventure and once as a throw-away line for a marriage. Otherwise they get mentioned in passing all the time but nothing is offered in way the conflict, literally or figuratively. The booklet is almost one hundred pages long ( and GORGEOUS) but only offers about 13 different encounters/locations. This should give you some idea of the lengthy background material and fluff that accompanies nearly everything.

The thirteen core encounter areas are laid out in a kind of chronological flowchart. Day 1 in city X leads to day 2 in city X which can lead to day 3 in city X or you can then transition to day 1 in city Y. Rinse and repeat thirteen times. “Day” is a bit of a misnomer since multiple real days can happened between several of the events. And that’s what they are, events. Is it a railroad if the players don’t care and can get out of the adventure at any time? This would be very railroady if there was some reason for the players to be interested.

The players are shipwrecked, or captured by pirates or something else and end up in this Indian city. As foreigners they need to go to the temple of Chuck to get a caste assigned to them. There they meet a priest, get their castes, and are then interrupted by a guy in a red turban. Seems he’s on a vengeance quest. It’s rare but not unheard of in these parts. The priest asks the players to go warn his friend Bob that the vengeance quest guy s after him. Oh, and Bob is in a different city. Oh, and those new castes pretty much compel you to complete the task … if you care about such things. Not a strong reason to be in the city and not a strong hook. This falls pretty much in to the much-loathed “go on the adventure because its the adventure were playing tonight” hook. That’s not a very compelling reason for the PLAYER to get interested, especially when its combined with “its because of some stupid cultural thing.”

The party joins a caravan to go the next city. They play cards (what is it with made up card/dice games in adventurers? I thought that went out of style in the 80’s?) They experience events. Zzzzz…. Ok, that’s unfair; this part actually contains a pretty good encounter … and two of the worse ones in the adventure. The caravan stops in a village and the a beautiful 14 year old girl approaches the characters. She’s supposed to be married to a goat soon and, Surprise! Surprise! doesn’t want to be. I found this to be the most interesting encounter in the adventure. It’s absurd, relatable, and there are all sort of solutions that the party could implement. The other two encounters on the caravan are lamer. In the first the party is ambushed and attacked by the caravans own scouts., who turn out to be Thugee/Kali-worshipers (errr … by which I mean the local equivalent.) They can make a skill check and if they get the best result possible they realize that it’s a trap! It’s pretty lame. But not as lame as what’s to come. The final caravan ‘Day’ is an attack by a rival nations raiding party on the caravan. The party is urged to defend the caravan and the other people get ready. The bad guys attack! An INFINITE amount of bad guys. The caravan has to get overrun and burned and the DM is urged to send more and more enemies until the party flees in to the jungle, along with the rest of the survivors. This COMPLETE FUCKING BULLSHIT serves ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING PURPOSE at all. The party quickly makes it the nearby city they were traveling to. The caravan, and it’s master, has no involvement in the adventure. So why the fuck would you railroad the party and make their action irrelevant? To tell a better fucking story? That’s fucking bullshit. Why not let the party create their own story, especially when it has NO impact on anything else going on? Err, I mean … “I was disappointed by this aspect of the adventure.”
Great! The party has made it to the city where Bob lives. (Remember Bob? The lame-o hook was to notify him that some guy was on a vengeance quest to kill him.) The party find him and notify him. Quest over! Yeah!

Oh, no, wait. Now the adventure turns COMPLETELY around. Out of nowhere the party learns about some children being marched off to get a better life in a monastery. Bullshit suspicions are raised. And by that I mean that the party has to remember, and follow-up, on some pretty tenuous ties. The old priest called Bob his “good friend” but Bob doesn’t specifically remember the priest. That’s about it. Based on that the party must badger Bob in to revealing more. about his new religion. You see, he distributes charity to the poor in a filthy stinkhole of a city. Oh, and he blesses the guys in the iron works, going out of his way to be nice to people who are frequently maimed in the course of their hard lives. And he’s sending some kids off to get educated and give them a better caste. This, clearly, means that the party must badger him in to revealing more. A lot more. Like REALLY get on his case and get him seriously agitated. Who the hell is going to do that out of the blue? Based on his charitable works? Or the fact he can’t remember a priest? LAME.
Somehow the party follows the kids, find a village who tell them about a temple in the jungle and then go to the temple. Inside they find a bunch of slaves, some human lackeys, and a Naga. The temple map is essentially linear and the rooms don’t really have anything interesting going on, with a single exception. I’ve poured over this section multiple times and I can not for the life of me figure out how many lackeys are in the temple. It’s implied several times that they will defend the temple but there’s no indication how many there are. That would seem to be a critical fucking flaw. The one interesting room is full of drugged slaves being fed and/or having their organs harvested. Kind of neato. The Naga has an interesting element to it also. The characters saves vs the Nagas hypnotize power are modified by how nice they’ve been to people. Save the goat girl? +2. Been polite to your elders? +1. Won money gambling? +1. (WTF?!) That’s an interesting mechanic. It reinforces certain types of behavior though, which almost certainly leads to min/max’ing and railroading. Better be good or the monsters are gonna get you!
Finally, despite the name of the adventure and publishers blurb, the jungle doesn’t really play much of a part here. It’s essentially non-existant. Pretty strange. A Naga temple in a jungle is a pretty classic element, too bad the jungle isn’t used at all to make things more interesting.

On a positive note: each location in the adventure, as well as several more locations in nearby areas, have several rumors associated with them. These are clearly adventure hooks for the DM to utilize. “The gold comes from abandoned tombs” and “The giant Bohar boar is on the loose again!”

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/92711/Shadow-Sword–Spell-Under-Pashuvanams-Lush?affiliate_id=1892600

by Gabriel Brouillard
for Rogue Games
Shadow, Sword & Spell

Covering most of this land is a thick jungle called the Pashuvanam, or Jungle of Beasts. The jungle deserves its name. Fierce monsters and animals plague Beidhanids and Nipuans alike, sometimes destroying entire villages. Over the last few centuries, most of the dangerous creatures have been driven away from major settlements and main roads, giving the inhabitants a sense of security. Still, stories of unspeakable horrors lurking in the jungle’s depth persist—and are regularly proven true. What evil lurks under the lush?

I like a certain style of D&D. I don’t like the style of D&D, or RPG’s in general, that this adventure represents. This adventure takes place in a West Asia/India setting. It’s meant to be a pulpy human-centric world. It’s organized in a chronological flowchart style and, while full of fluff, offers little in the way to motivate the players. The game system is NOT a D&D clone.

This takes places in a pseudo-historical red-dot indian setting and is FULL of superficial cultural references. Castes, cults, language and culture all combine to give that superficial feeling of a pasted-on theme in which to set an adventure. The explanation for many things in this adventure turns out to be “its a cultural thing.” A huge number of words are spent on various cultural themes which are then generally ignored except when used as a pretext for some hook. Castes, in particular, receive lengthy and frequent mention and yet they really only show up in play twice: once to kick off the adventure and once as a throw-away line for a marriage. Otherwise they get mentioned in passing all the time but nothing is offered in way the conflict, literally or figuratively. The booklet is almost one hundred pages long ( and GORGEOUS) but only offers about 13 different encounters/locations. This should give you some idea of the lengthy background material and fluff that accompanies nearly everything.

The thirteen core encounter areas are laid out in a kind of chronological flowchart. Day 1 in city X leads to day 2 in city X which can lead to day 3 in city X or you can then transition to day 1 in city Y. Rinse and repeat thirteen times. “Day” is a bit of a misnomer since multiple real days can happened between several of the events. And that’s what they are, events. Is it a railroad if the players don’t care and can get out of the adventure at any time? This would be very railroady if there was some reason for the players to be interested.

The players are shipwrecked, or captured by pirates or something else and end up in this Indian city. As foreigners they need to go to the temple of Chuck to get a caste assigned to them. There they meet a priest, get their castes, and are then interrupted by a guy in a red turban. Seems he’s on a vengeance quest. It’s rare but not unheard of in these parts. The priest asks the players to go warn his friend Bob that the vengeance quest guy s after him. Oh, and Bob is in a different city. Oh, and those new castes pretty much compel you to complete the task … if you care about such things. Not a strong reason to be in the city and not a strong hook. This falls pretty much in to the much-loathed “go on the adventure because its the adventure were playing tonight” hook. That’s not a very compelling reason for the PLAYER to get interested, especially when its combined with “its because of some stupid cultural thing.”

The party joins a caravan to go the next city. They play cards (what is it with made up card/dice games in adventurers? I thought that went out of style in the 80’s?) They experience events. Zzzzz…. Ok, that’s unfair; this part actually contains a pretty good encounter … and two of the worse ones in the adventure. The caravan stops in a village and the a beautiful 14 year old girl approaches the characters. She’s supposed to be married to a goat soon and, Surprise! Surprise! doesn’t want to be. I found this to be the most interesting encounter in the adventure. It’s absurd, relatable, and there are all sort of solutions that the party could implement. The other two encounters on the caravan are lamer. In the first the party is ambushed and attacked by the caravans own scouts., who turn out to be Thugee/Kali-worshipers (errr … by which I mean the local equivalent.) They can make a skill check and if they get the best result possible they realize that it’s a trap! It’s pretty lame. But not as lame as what’s to come. The final caravan ‘Day’ is an attack by a rival nations raiding party on the caravan. The party is urged to defend the caravan and the other people get ready. The bad guys attack! An INFINITE amount of bad guys. The caravan has to get overrun and burned and the DM is urged to send more and more enemies until the party flees in to the jungle, along with the rest of the survivors. This COMPLETE FUCKING BULLSHIT serves ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING PURPOSE at all. The party quickly makes it the nearby city they were traveling to. The caravan, and it’s master, has no involvement in the adventure. So why the fuck would you railroad the party and make their action irrelevant? To tell a better fucking story? That’s fucking bullshit. Why not let the party create their own story, especially when it has NO impact on anything else going on? Err, I mean … “I was disappointed by this aspect of the adventure.”

Great! The party has made it to the city where Bob lives. (Remember Bob? The lame-o hook was to notify him that some guy was on a vengeance quest to kill him.) The party find him and notify him. Quest over! Yeah!

Oh, no, wait. Now the adventure turns COMPLETELY around. Out of nowhere the party learns about some children being marched off to get a better life in a monastery. Bullshit suspicions are raised. And by that I mean that the party has to remember, and follow-up, on some pretty tenuous ties. The old priest called Bob his “good friend” but Bob doesn’t specifically remember the priest. That’s about it. Based on that the party must badger Bob in to revealing more. about his new religion. You see, he distributes charity to the poor in a filthy stinkhole of a city. Oh, and he blesses the guys in the iron works, going out of his way to be nice to people who are frequently maimed in the course of their hard lives. And he’s sending some kids off to get educated and give them a better caste. This, clearly, means that the party must badger him in to revealing more. A lot more. Like REALLY get on his case and get him seriously agitated. Who the hell is going to do that out of the blue? Based on his charitable works? Or the fact he can’t remember a priest? LAME.

Somehow the party follows the kids, find a village who tell them about a temple in the jungle and then go to the temple. Inside they find a bunch of slaves, some human lackeys, and a Naga. The temple map is essentially linear and the rooms don’t really have anything interesting going on, with a single exception. I’ve poured over this section multiple times and I can not for the life of me figure out how many lackeys are in the temple. It’s implied several times that they will defend the temple but there’s no indication how many there are. That would seem to be a critical fucking flaw. The one interesting room is full of drugged slaves being fed and/or having their organs harvested. Kind of neato. The Naga has an interesting element to it also. The characters saves vs the Nagas hypnotize power are modified by how nice they’ve been to people. Save the goat girl? +2. Been polite to your elders? +1. Won money gambling? +1. (WTF?!) That’s an interesting mechanic. It reinforces certain types of behavior though, which almost certainly leads to min/max’ing and railroading. Better be good or the monsters are gonna get you!

Finally, despite the name of the adventure and publishers blurb, the jungle doesn’t really play much of a part here. It’s essentially non-existant. Pretty strange. A Naga temple in a jungle is a pretty classic element, too bad the jungle isn’t used at all to make things more interesting.

On a positive note: each location in the adventure, as well as several more locations in nearby areas, have several rumors associated with them. These are clearly adventure hooks for the DM to utilize. “The gold comes from abandoned tombs” and “The giant Bohar boar is on the loose again!”

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/92711/Shadow-Sword–Spell-Under-Pashuvanams-Lush?affiliate_id=1892600