Beneath the Reeds

Posted on March 23, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By James S. Austin
Tacitus Publishing
OSE
Level 7

Magic offers the chance to do amazing things.  But one who practices the arts should be mindful of the proper methods to manipulate the Weave.  One such soul paid the price for his attempts to reach beyond the mortal veil, experimenting with necromancy.  His untimely death has left behind an active circle, continuing to pull upon the corruptive energies.  The lingering effects now bring great harm to those who draw too near.

This twelve page “Q-Encounter presents four ghouls and two wraiths for the party to stab, in one encounter. It is exactly what you think it would be, based on that description. 

I’m working through my wishlist! That means those of you waiting for a review of that $200 adventure, or that 600 page adventure, may begin to hope again! And, it also means I get to review things like this. Twelve pages for one encounter. One. And this isn’t even, like 4e or some nonsense, it’s OSE! That means it is essentially Basic D&D. Twelve pages! For one encounter in basic! The fucking Steading of the Hill Giant Chief was only eight!

We, of course, get a long ass background and lot of padded out pages at the start. In this edition of “Twisted Backstories” we find a necromancer who lives in a hut in the marshes, who make a permanent necrotic circle under the water and then dies. Then Two merchants get killed by bandits and thrown in the marshes … but one of them has a water fey ancestor so some fey reeds grow up around his body. This links the circle to some ley lines. This encourages four ghouls to settle nearby in a burrow and two wraiths to show up near/at the circle that is like twenty feet away. There’s a lot more detail than this. That is all useless. But, in typical Bad Adventure fashion the adventure goes on and on to justify the nonsense it is about. Just present it! Maybe a sentence if you need to, but just do it! It’s fucking D&D man, we’re not explaining quantum theory here.

The hooks are lame. Well, some of them. At level seven you get to go find a missing farmer. I got better things to do at level seven. There are, however, two that are more interesting. I might even call them rumours, or, perhaps, an interesting way of doing rumours that are presented as hooks here. Two fisherman, in the bar, talking about how they heard a crying baby in the reeds, paddling over they met a foul stench from the reeds and hurried off. Kind of nice. Lowkey. And, another that has weeping and moaning being heard and dark figures running amongst the trees. No travels after night anymore … I like the superstition leanings of these two. Creepy. But, yeah, “the local druid says the marsh has darkness in it …” Bleach.

Welcome to the adventure! You get four descriptions, of four different places, all up front, one after another, in long italics read-aloud. Hard to read. Then the read-aloud over-reveals details of the location. Or, to quote part of one “Bunched piles of bones and rotting flesh lay about with two recent kills, a male and female human, in the center—bite and claw marks showing a violent end for both.” It starts strong, yeah? Nicely visceral. And then we get to the male and female and bite and claw stuff, which is too much detail for a quick room scan. And then we get a little “the novelisation of the game” with the Showing A Violent End garbage. 

Ok, so, you got four sections of read-aloud, all in a row and then some tactics, day and night, for the four ghouls and two wraiths. Then you find out they have 257gp of treasure, meaning that the designer has absolutely no idea how OSE works. Joy. It’s just a conversion hack job. 5E, PF1, PF2 and OSE. Fuuuuuuck You! 

That $200 600 page adventure is looking a lot better right now … I know, this is my own fault. But, really, Tacitus? Just goes to show you …

This is $1 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Otherwise you wouldn’t buy it, yeah?

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/473353/beneath-the-reeds-ose?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 9 Comments

The Buried Convent of the Headless Saint

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
Eon Fontes-May
YouCanBreatheNow Games
OSR
Level 1

Buried ‘neath a forgotten landslide, deep under the foothills, is a ruined cloister with a secret. Long ago, nestled into the mountain there, it is said that a true saint lived and died. The pious woman never spoke a single untruth from the moment she drew breath, and the gods blessed her to continue speaking truth afterward. Old folks whisper that the Healdess Saint is still enthroned down there in her lightless cathedral. They say that if you bring her a skull then it can be made to answer questions, truthfully, from beyond the grave.

This seven page adventure uses two pages to describe about 23 rooms in a buried nunnery. There are a lot of interesting ideas in this, but, also, it lacks descriptive thrust and, perhaps, is a little low on interactivity beyond some basics. But the ideas here, the basic concepts and some of how they are implemented, are quite intriguing!

We’ve got this convent. It’s buried, they say. They also say that if you take a skull to it then you can make it answer questions. SWEET! I love that kind of oracular shit as an adventure hook. There’s so many command words and things to know in D&D, and why not exploit the mythos with some ripping of knowledge from the beyond? 

Approaching, you see just the top of a tower, nothing more. Cause it’s buried, duh. Although, a short distance away you can find some exposed roof tiles … thus you have two ways of breaking in, both of which could involve some crowbar action. I approve! There’s a three floor tower, buried, along with a flourish floor connected building (the roof tiles, duh.) And, thus, the convent. The map supporting this is a charming little affair, with little bits of drawing and notes on it to help the DM run it. Monsters and major room features are noted, along with a note or two like “rotting floor” or “bodies” next to a pile of little bodies. There’s a few ways up and down between levels also, and a few hard to get to places because of that. This is a great fucking map, in all respects, especially for a smallish 23 room dungeon. The notations and illustrations help run the place and the map complexity contributes to an exploratory vibe. Quite nice.

And then we’ve got this starving nun, who goes cannibal, and thusly turns in to a ghoul. And her fellow sisters take down doors and such to build a barricade to keep their fellow away. Pretty sweet! As well as the bodies intertwined who took poison. (Second time in a short while in my reviews for that one, eh?) 

Steal some of those gold candelabras and holy symbols from the dead bodies and really go after looting those religions items. (WHat are those called? Not relics? Just the normal religions shit you’d find in a church?) Anyway, stuff em in the loot bag. And, there are some decent non-book items. LIke a skull to carry around, or a warhammer in a stylized skull. Or an actual skull used as a mace. Hmm, lots of skull theming here. 😉 Anyway, nice little bits and bots here and there, both in the mundane treasure and the magical, and mixed in to some more generic items of both types. I like the extra effort, I just wish there were more.

My major problem is two fold: the descriptions and the interactivity. There is a general “always on” description note at the top of the encounters page, and since it’s only two pages long, it does help a bit with atmosphere. But this is generally to the exclusion of much other in the way of a room description. And, the interactivity is a little lacking as well. But, the monsters descriptions are all generally on a monster reference sheet. So what is the room description doing? That’s a great question. One room tells us that “The dormitory staircase hides a secret tunnel that the abbess used to sneak around and snoop on the young women in the convent.” Ok, so, thats very nice, but also, it’s backstory and not really relevant. It’s SUPER interesting though. It goes on “It’s very hard to spot, but a hinged panel leads to a cramped passage filled with spiderwebs and insects.” Ok, so, now we’re cooking! Cramped, spiderwebs, insects. Got it! Hinged panel is great. Hard to spot is not useful, if a secret passage; the default is hard to spot. Then “The tunnel remained mostly sealed and is disgusting but harmless.” Again, another pretty useless sentence. It’s backstory. It’s justification. “It continues for 150ft until a trapdoor in the ceiling that leads to the rectory. Area 18)” I’m not getting the disgusting part of this. Cramped, spiderwebs, ok. Cramped is good but spiderwebs and insects could use some beefing up. The hiinged panel is great. The rest is … meh. Maybe keep on or two concepts here, but you need to work them in differently. They can’t be the main focus, and they are in this description. We need more about the webs and insects. 

And this is not an isolated room. A great many of them are like this. It is integrating shit like that well, to create an interesting product TO READ … but we’re here to play. And the descriptions tend to not be focused on that. “The storage basement was accessible only by a hidden trapdoor, but now lies exposed by the hole left behind when a derrogar fell from the ladder.” Again, I could live my life forever without the first clause, but the second is decent. It needs more of that, with better descriptive use of adjectives and adverbs to bring the environment to life. To this end, the interactivity is all modeled after stabbing things. There’s some interesting lead ino, or follow through, from stabbing things. But it’s mostly just stabbing things. A potential rats nest of treasure, literally, telegraphs a rat attack. That’s great! But, also, a puzzle with the solution of “tell the skull seven secrets” that you learn the answer to in another room, while decent in concept, is not enough to carry an entire adventure.

So, again, a GREAT deal of promise here. The room descriptions need strong edits to retain their charm and add an evocative environment. And the interactivity could be more varied, especially given the exploratory nature. I’m a little perturbed by a couple of padding pages that add nothing much, but I’d get over it if the room descriptions were a little better. These little things are, I think, showing some interesting promise, they just more hard work on the core of it: the room descriptions and interactivity. I could be generous with a No Regerts here, but I’m not going to be.

This is $4 at DriveThru. You get three pages of preview, including the map page. A page of descriptions would have been good. 

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/471619/the-buried-convent-of-the-headless-saint?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 6 Comments

The Palace of Evendur

Posted on March 18, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Tom Garner
Crawler Solo
B/X
Levels 1-3

Your party is approached by a local storyteller who spins a tale about the empty and overgrown Palace of Evendur, once home to a powerful planar travelling wizard, who went missing more than a life-time ago. The players must unravel the mystery of the palace, erected at the edge of a strange and enchanted forest…

This thirteen page adventure uses four pages to detail a small “palace” with ten rooms. It does everything wrong. But, also, it does it wrong is a kind of classical way. You know, the way some kind-hearted but well meaning person might. But it’s still wrong. And unusable.

A five paragraph long read-aloud starts off our hook, with a bard dude offering you 30gp to go look at this disappeared wizards home and solve the great mystery: why did the wizzo build his “palace” on the edge of the woods? Not what I’d call a great mystery, but whatever. After many pages of worthless padding later, we get to room one.

And are confronted again by a long section of read-aloud. This is the norm for this adventure. You need to wade through it. It says things like “You are standing before …” or “You are in a large throne room …” Rom after room. And then sentence after sentence after that. “Upon the throne appears to be …” Every read-aloud makes an appearance. Too long. Using boring descriptive wors like large. Things APPEAR to be. Over-revealing details of the room. As well as the perspective thing. 

Then comes the stat blocks. A full on stat block, inline with the text, in full MM glory. Including Treasure Type and description. This gets in the way, actively, of trying to understand the text of the room in order to run it. At one point I think I waded through a page and half of text, only to find out that there was a notable chandelier in the room, in the next to last paragraph. Well, fuck. And it’s important. And it’s not in the read-aloud. Well fuck me. This is a textbook example of why that kind of shit should not be done. 

You’re looking for a key, it turns out, so you can get in to the garden room on the half moon. No real clue that’s what you need to do, but that’s what you need to do. When you kill the armor in room two (4HD, surrounded by a bunch of 2HD flying swords. And a 4HD murder rug. At level one …) it drops the key. 

After slogging through room after room of things artistically saying “what’s the password?” then you meet a kindly dryad in the garden who tells you her tragic tale, and then returns to her tree. But, wait, the missing wizzo planned for this! The tree dies! She’s now driven insane! Kill her! Yes, this is the way of this adventure. Play by fiat. And not the good kind of philosopher-king. The bad kind.

Let’s see. It has almost no monetary treasure. At all. But, you do get three wishes, as a party, when you go in! You don’t know it, but you do. Also, all three good types of crystal balls are stuffed up a chimney in one of the rooms. Three of them. In fact, the whole place is littered with magic items. And maybe … 500gp of mundane treasure? Until you kill the dryad. She has “treasure type D” buried under her tree.

Why? Why would you do this? Why would not just roll the treasure and put it here? Why tell us it’s D? You put fucking treasure in to every other room. Why would you not put it in to that room also? The main room? 

This is fully representative of The Bad Old Days. When T$R shoved things down our throats. When the interactivity in an adventure was strained. It’s weird, both this and the previous review were, I think, straining the boundaries of kiddy D&D, that slur that folks used to described BASIC to differentiate it from their 1e master. It’s the full on Eliminster “Heel!” thing. Neither adventure go fully there, but they are getting really close to it. It’s not the whimsy and wonder of an OD&D game, but a writing and orientation to a simplistic interactivity. Not in just stabbing. But in blatant passwords and find the blue key syndrome. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1.30. The preview is six pages. You get to see some of the padded intro and the first room, as well as part f the second. That should be enough to tell you what you are signing up for. 

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/470618/the-palace-of-evendur-basic-adventure-module?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 3 Comments

Duirdun Vale

Posted on March 16, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Mark Kerruish
Imagination Underway
OSR
Level 1

“Look here,” says the dragon. “I know you must be a bit feeble of mind not to run and hide from a hunting red dragon. My condolences on your thick-wittedness. Take my advice and run next time.”

This 24 page adventure presents six encounters, linear, on an overland journey between a village and a city. This is no whimsy or wonder. It is boring dreck with too much read-aloud and nothing going on.

How bad is this? It’s is close to being Eliminster ‘Heal!’ bad. At one point “Later that day, lake gulls from Lake Mimrise fly low over the party and drop a bar of soap for each person present.” Uh huh. Cause if you’re a stinky person and try to get in to the city then the guards look weird at you. That’s the final encounter. In the adventure. Of the six encounters that’s the final one. The gulls dropping soap (“there’s a nearby stream” the adventure tells us) and then the gate guards sniffing the party and telling them the Earl doesn’t like stinky people and the city is very clean. That’s where the adventure ends.

Oh, fuck, right. That doesn’t make sense. You see, this is an ESCORT mission. You’re escorting a young monk from the village to the city. I know, I know, escort mission. But, no, not like that. He’s not going to be in danger. Instead he’s going to silently judge you and you’ll get less reward, I guess, when you get to the monastery in the city. You’re never TOLD this. You’re only told you’ll get paid by the monks in the city when you arrive. I guess you have to intuit that the dude is going to rat out your misdeeds. Or, whatever he thinks are misdeeds. So, you get to the city gates and you’re not paid. The adventure just ends. There is no payment. No monastery. I guess that’s the next adventure? 

So, six linear encounters on the road. The entire thing is very 5e in its layout and art style and so on. No doubt this is from a template. The art is AI, but I don’t really give a fuck, except to say I hate it. In fact, I think I hate absolutely everything about this adventure. 

I hate the long and pointless read-aloud sections. These are SUPER common and SUPER long. Her’es just a portion of one, one paragraph from among many when starting the adventure “It’s a grey, dreary morning with a chill drizzle. Liss, the innkeeper’s help, brings you a hearty breakfast of sausages, bread, and gravy. She glances out the window as she puts the plates in front of you. “Unseasonal, ” Liss comments. “Looks like we’re in for an early autumn.” She walks away to let you get stuck into your breakfast. You’ll need all the energy you can get if the road turns muddy.” I hope Liss dies. Truly. Isn’t this the way of it? You, someone engaged and interested in the world around them. Full of joy and wonder for the new day ahead. Ain’t nothing gonna break my stride, ain’t nothing gonna slow me down! Then Lizz appears. With his drivel. The mundane pointlessness. Prosaic. Liss deserves all of the abuses of the mundanity of the world … I’m going down in a hole in the ground. Oh, also, this read-aloud is pointless. You get it, it’s the novelization of the adventure rather than the adventure proper. 

We get, like, 2.5 pages of wandering monsters for day and night. For when you go off the road in to the forest or some such. But you never do. You stay on the road. It’s like throwing in the deep ocean encounter tables. 

So, escort mission, right? First encounter: a bridge over a mud puddle has collapsed and a horse is sinking in to the mud while some men watch, with their wagon. It’s exactly what it sounds like, nothing more. It takes, like, 2.5 pages for the designer to tell us all about it. Encounter two: Frank the goblin is looking for some dude named Bob. Oh, also, do you  want to gamble? You can say No, it’s ok. That’s another page and a half. Then you meet some … hmmm … stereotypical eastern european travelers known for reading fortunes. Not Rromani. Those are real people. The designer is using the other word, which polite society no longer uses. Anyway, a page and a half for a fortune reading that uses a nicer version of the Deck of Many Things. Then you find a scroll on the road and a wizard in the next town who confronts you for stealing it. Another two pages for this, but, interesting: “If the party killed anyone, a gallows is constructed in front of them while they are in the stocks. They are executed as murderers the next day” Well now, that took a turn! Just like guessing what action the monk wants you to take, you get to guess what action gets you hung! But, also, fuck me man, nice one! I mean, you’re coming at it from an overly moralizing position, but I like the brutality of it. Some fuck around and find out shit right there! But, also, we telegraph shit like this, or should anyway. It’s only fair to the party when you change the rules or game world in a major way. Let’s see, then we’re taking a couple of pages to maybe fight some ogres. Then you meet a red dragon, which is actually a gold dragon in disguise. That’s it. You can do the entire thing without combat. Ignore the mud thing and walk around it. DOn’t talk/gamble with the goblin. Ignore the travelers. Ignore the two wrestling ogre teens. Talk to the dragon/polied dude. Take a bath with the soap. Adventure over.

23 pages for a couple of wilderness encounters. In becmi. IN BECMI!!!With nothing really going on. Just stand there and let the world roll by. Because there’s no treasure. After defeating four ogres, in their lair, you get about 260gp in loot. You fucking enjoy that new fucking level. Then again, it’s six do nothing encounters, why should you level for that, or get even close? 

I have no idea what this thing is and I have no idea why it exists and I have no idea how one could write something like this. 

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages and shows you all of that wonderful town/hook read-aloud with the sausages and gravy, as well as part of the wandering tables, which you won’t be using. Bad preview.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/471169/duirdun-vale?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 2 Comments

Tales of the Wolfguard

Posted on March 13, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Andrea Tupac Mollica
Hellwinter Forge of Wonders
OSE
Level ... 3?

Blizzard Vale is the northernmost province of the Empire, conquered with great endeavours centuries ago. It’s a frozen, hostile land with sparse patches of conifers, icy rivers, and lakes. The Wolfguard, an old garrison of soldiers and scouts, watches over the vale and protects the town of Ysvindur from the barbarian Elves and more sinister threats.

This is a 56 page regional setting with a couple of places to explore. It’s the boring land of boringness. Except this time it’s got a light veneer of winter.

So, there’s a regional setting and then there’s a regional setting. One has a little sanbody area that you can explore, with a home base, some hooks to get you going and sites to explore and so on. The other is a fluff piece. Maybe more of a gazetteer. This is not the sandboxy thing I thought it to be, from the blurb. I can get behind reviewing a regional setting. But, fluff? I don’t know. When’s the last time I made the analogy of getting inspired by the morning constitutional? 

The analogy is not far off. We’ve got a little valley. We’ve got a little town in the valley. The valley is a valley and the town is a boring little town. Typical town descriptions. Elk jerky and icicle mint tea at the bar. The usual townfolk descriptions. The only notable things are a ice statue in the main temple and an assassins guild in town. THAT comes with a little table to spice up life. Drugging wells, killing folk and so on Drop in a random roll to spice up the game, it says, and I agree. It’s BY FAR the best thing about the town or the vale. Otherwise this is a generic outskirts town, but with a winter theme. You’re The Wolfguards! Lairing at Wolfs Den, your base in the valley, with the town nearby. What you’re guarding against I have no idea. There are also some elf barbarian tribes nearby, but they don’t really get much to them, in spite of having a decent word and page count. And such it is; it’s mostly fluff with very little actionable data. Bird people live in the mountains. Great. I’m bored. There have got to be a half dozen better supplements for a town to run from. Fuck me, Pembrocktonshire is better and it’s just a list of weirdos in a town. I loathe the focus on the mundane. “Your dour eyes hold the echoes of grief and regret, and your footsteps resonate with the determination to leave behind the darkness that clings to you.” *bleech* That’s the little intro text we get to inspire the DM. 

Oh, you do get a little table on how to spend XP to upgrade your Wolfs Lair tower. It’s kind of a cute idea. Spend some XP and find something hidden or some such, or get some other bonus. It’s a cute little upgrade thing. 

Ok, so, we’ve got some dungeon and an explicit adventur ein this thing also. Seven dungeons. Each one about a half page. It’s a map, a half page map, with some text bubbles pointing to an area and saying something like “Nest of a rust monster’ or “Amber golem guarding the libraries entrance.” That;’s the extent of them. You enjoy that.

The actual adventure is just a little better. You’re out riding, on the way to your first assignment … the Wolfs Den! Lair. Whatever. Oh no! You see some elf barbarians with wolf helmets fighting some elf barbarians with Eagle helmets! What do you do? That’s scene one, a fight. Scene two is an elf come running up after the fight and saying “your supply wagon was taken its your problem now,.” Ok. Scene three is a little six room dungeon over three pages. You’re in a cave. You have to roll, when in the same room as a campfire, to detect the campfire smoke. That don’t make sense, right? According to the little map (which looks like a little Dyson cave map) the room can’t be more than 20 feet wide? Except the room keys seem to to use a one square equal seven feet scale. Then, I turned to a different map, a full page map of the same cave, included in the appendix. Seven feet? No. Five or ten feet? No. The scale is one square equals five hundred yards!!! Well, that was unexpected. And not present on the map at all that is inline with the text. Huh. Still, “footprints go east” to nowhere. I think the designer meant south. It’s weird, that’s the second time they made this mistake, I think. In another mini-dungeon they have a text bubble that says something like You hear sounds from the east … where the east is a cave wall. The hallway runs north and west. Dude did, I think, confuse themself … they use some non-traditional “up is not north” compass. Like, North is to the Southeast on one map. Why the fuck would you do that?

The adventure and mini-dungeons are not value adds. The regional setting is not interesting, from a dynamic gameplay standpoint, except for the assassin table. This is not a place to explore. 

This is $3 at DriveThru. There is no preview. There are, however, seventeen five star ratings. *sigh* What can men do against such reckless hate?

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/471450/tales-of-the-wolfguard?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 15 Comments

Hiss

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Idle Cartulary
Self Published
Cairn

A falling star. Neighbors changed. People missing. Something is amiss in Plum Oleander, and you must uncover the mystery to survive.

This thirty page digest adventure is a muddled mess. It wants to be a subtle power play in a village. It is, though, just a big list of things and ideas.

The designer is trying to a kind of Cult of the Reptile God thing here. At least that’s what they state. You know, snake parasite things slithering inside of people and taking them over and all of that jazz. Complicating things is that the reptile cult, centered around a crashed meteor, landed in a church and the church’s catacombs are coming t life to avenge the sacralidge. So, faction three (normal villagers, cult) is the skeleton avengers of the church. Finally, the kids of the villager are not impacted so they have an alliance with the mole men, who are also subjected by the cult, and are waging a stealth war. This could be pretty cool!

But it’s not.

This is mostly just a long list of things. A long list of places in the village. A long list of entries for some of the buildings (Note that I am not calling these keys.) A long list of people. A long list of treasure that the dm COULD place. And, sometimes, one of the entries in the list has something relevant to the adventure. “Two snakelet-folk. Tossing knucklebones; learning how to have fun” Now see, that’s great! They’ve been taken over and trying to learn how to fit in, all Resident Alien style. Absolutely! 

But what we don’t get is any of that in the village proper. These things are reserved for the four keyed locations. In the village we get a mundane description of a village farmhouse and who lives there and not much else. And those entries are NOT short. They are, in a way charming, in the way that a series booklet might be charming for a series. “Aragon, also called Strider, is the lost heir in hiding.” Well, ok, sure. But it doesn’t really bring us down to earth in a way that is going to drive the adventure forward. We’re looking for the Bree thing, the taproom such. 

Instead what we get is something like this: “Talmage Rawbone, snakeletfolk. Joke-killing, barrel-shaped sheriff. My dreams were all of anger and frustration, always wanting to use my

fists but never submitting. I am free, now” Ok, sure buddy. Or something like “Adult Children. Peace, Raggedy falcon. Sherlock, Ghost drinking a cocktail. Revolution, Thistle, always with an angle.” Hints of a system resource, not well implemented, with form followed but function lost. I don’t know what the fuck I am supposed to do with that shit. I can’t even grok what it’s trying to tell me, as in  what’s the verbs and what’s the nouns. 

The “keys” to the four main sites are exactly the opposite. We’ve got that learning to play knucklebones entry. Or “God-snake idol and kneeling cushions. Coins on the altar. “ or “God-snake idol and kneeling cushions. Coins on the altar. “ Very minimally described. Not exactly evocative. Rather than those giant long entrie the villagers and buildings get, these encounter keys are essentially one liners. And while I’m down for the snake cult members sleeping coiled up on the floor, like snakes, I’m gonna need just a tad more. “Major treasury – Plentiful gold and jewellery for the God-clothier.” just ain’t gonna cut it.

There’s no action here. I’d argue there’s not even any potential energy, in spite of a little war timeline mechanism thing. There’s just a list of people and their allegiances, poorly organized by building, and then nothing to really drive the action. No inciting event. No plots or plans. Thisis the real sin of this adventure. 

And it’s got all the usual shitty hooks. Your mom and dad are incommunicado. A mentor. Caravan guards. Just every bad trope, badly trope. And nonsensical writing, such as “Deeper still, bogguts in Dorp, subdued by the cult, quietly seek allies for their resistance.” Uh, so. Ok. Dorp is a place, I guess? And bogguts are people? 

Finally, let us look at the DriveThru blurb: “”Legitimately creating the lexicon for what I look for in good adventures” – Sandro, creator of Steel Hearts.” Uh. Ok. here’s more of people being overly dramatically nice about this thing. The kind of stuff that makes me immediately suspicious. 

Decent magic items here. Decent window dressing with the learning to be human and sleeping coiled up things and such. But it is, I think, just a village description. And no real timeline or events. 

It’s just not focused around running it, as an adventure. And I don’t mean room/key format. That may be appropriate for some elements of this, but the core element of the gameplay, the secret war and people and plots and such, no. It’s just not organized around THAT type of gameplay.

This is $21 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You can kind of get an idea of what the thing is like from it. Just imagine more of the same, about everything except the keys. 

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/470904/hiss-cairn-edition?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 9 Comments

Underneath the Ruined Watchtower of some Forgotten Duke

Posted on March 9, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Eon Fontes-May
YouCanBreatheNow Games
OSR
Levels 1-2

People here just call it ‘the old watchtower.’ To the shepherds and merchants who pass by, it’s nothing more than a landmark. Young lovers sneak away to carve their names on the weathered stone walls. Among the locals, the structure is widely believed to have been the military outpost of some forgotten duke. It was not. Hidden beneath the ruined watchtower is a dark relic from a forgotten age.

This seven page digest adventure uses two pages to describe a watchtower & basement with about twenty rooms. There’s some interesting moments here, more so than usual, but fails t convey a sense of the environment. Maybe next time.

Brycy Bryce likes a short, in terms of page count, adventure. That should be clear by now. Ye Olde G1 kicks some ass. But people just loooooove to stick some fucking backstory in to their room descriptions. They fucking love to pad out entries with filler words.  Let us rejoice in overly describing the mechanics involved in a situation, to the point of exhaustion. FIll those first pages with your fiction, backstory, and a town that is in no way interesting. FIll the rear with pregens, and appendix after appendix. 

Or, you can work the fucking room description. Work it till you fucking hate it. And second, fourth, and fifth draft and disgust every time you look at the wonder you are trying to convey. For us, the descendents of O’Shaughnessy. I want to believe! But not too today, you strange enchanted boy.

This adventure is seven digest pages. The watchtower has 21 rooms, including a couple of areas outside. There are three pages of padding, with some repetition of information. The actual room descriptions take about a page and a half, plus a page for the map. There was room here, in those seven pages, to do something interesting and good. A promise, unfulfilled. The background information tells us little to add to the adventure. It does not add to hooks or situations to get the party mixed up in. It is just generic backstory and the like that adds to a rich tapestry of history, that will never see use at the table. It’s not like I’m going to get pissed if we get a little bit oft this in an adventure, or a throw off sentence or two in a room description. But when the focus of the adventure seems to be on this aspect of the writing, when the actual keys suffer, then I must suggest that focus has been lost.l You should have been working those keys instead of fucking about with the fluff. But, first,an intermission …

The thing does a decent job with some ideas. It grasps a interesting situation and dumps them in fairly frequently. There is, for example, a hastily dug and shallow grave outside of the watcher. With a body in it. That has been gnawed upon. One of the halfling bandits from inside who opened the wrong door and got disemboweled by zombies. That’s great! Not the backstory, necessarily, but the clue. It amps the players up, It provides clues as to what is going on inside. It causes questions and gives apprehension. Great little fucking encounter. All from “Recently dug gravesite for [a bandit] half-devoured by a zombie.” The element of grounding, here, that his provides, bringing home the realism and the viscerarealness that comes along with it, without falling in to the trap of “realism.” You know the word. The word I won’t use. But, yeah, that’s the magic word.

Which is not to say that the adventure does it to an overwhelming degree, but when it does, it’s hitting hard and it’s a major strength. It also explicitly provides a vibe check, up front, before the keys starts. In a little shaded box we get a vibe for the upper tower and the tower basement. Weathered stone, lovers graffiti, hateful graffiti, old campsites and scattered debris and filth. And for the lower tower, a large rat twitching with paralysis, a bloody handprint of a halfling, stacks of brittle paperwork. Nicely done little “always on” details to help the DM set the mood room after room. A zombie with a carcass crawler eating entwined, gnawing on his innards. A halfling along and crying in his room, drinking to forget his sorrows, or curled up fetally in the courtyard vomiting from the booze. The air smelling of sulfur, brimstone and smoke in a room, foreshadowing another room, nearby. Noice.

But these little situations are few, and not enough to carry the adventure. And for each one of these we get “Crashing sounds can be heard from inside this medical center its in disarray.” That’s your descriptions. Oh, there more, there’s four more sentences. But the description, proper, of the environment, is no more. Or, a ruined wagon outside thee tower, hit by the bandits. With the padded out “An unlucky victim of the  bandits” and then “There’s a unique crest on the wagon, someone might care to know about this ..?” And you, the designer, might want to provide three extra words instead of that description to really hook up the DM and get their juices going. I get what you were trying to do, and am VERY supportive, but you need to do it with specificity, not with ambiguity. Anyway, the adventure loves to give us room descriptions that are not. The Commanders office hung with outdated maps. Hastily barricaded steps. A wide set of stairs, descending. They just needed another few words, or sentence, to turn them from the sparseness of an almost minimal description in to a terse worded and evocative environment that makes the imagination run wild.

Work those key description.

This is $4 at DriveThru.The preview shows you the first three pages, of backstory and shit, but none of the keys. It should have shows a few keys, because the preview wis not good for its intended purpose, getting a sense of the adventure you are about considering purchasing.


https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/471622/underneath-the-ruined-watchtower-of-some-forgotten-duke?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 1 Comment

Cloister of the Frog God

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Gabor Lux
First Hungarian d20 Society
OSR
Levels 4-6

The cloister has stood on a desolate ridge overlooking vast swamps since time immemorial. Dedicated to the great and terrible Tsathoggus, this edifice of evil was destroyed again and again through history, only to re-emerge from its slumber once the forces of Law grew lax and the terrible deeds of the frog-cultists became forgotten. Now a new order rises among the old walls, while older evils stir in stone grottoes and underground sanctuaries. Spies visit the settlements of the marshlands, and offerings make their way to the cloister where the monks hold their vigils as their ancestors have, guarding a nightmare that refuses to die.

This 42 page adventure presents an evil monestary with a couple of above ground areas and a three level dungeon, along with an overland through a swamp. Specificity, interactivity, and some brutal underground areas worthy of Tsathoggus himself. With eighty or so encounter areas, this thing gonna DELIVER on a difficult D&D romp.

Specificity. That’s the name of the game. When I talk about evocative descriptions and things that are sticky I am, I think, generally speaking about specificity. These are details that nail the vibe of someplace. That really deliver on imagery and allow the DM to then really grok the place and run wild with it. And this is something that this adventures delivers on, time and again.

A village/town is introduced. It lies on the edge of a miasmatic swamp. The locals laze about in their hammocks, smoking their bitter herbs from pipes, bats are nailed over doorways and cats are hung up on high poles. Dirty ragged and lean ne’er-do-wells. Or, perhaps my favorite line, a place worthy of neither trade nor conquest. Ouch! I fucking love a diseased hovel of a village. You wanna grow up and be like them, safe-ish, diseased and boring, a life of toil, misery and boredom? Or, you wanna go stick your head in that hole in the Dreadmarsh and see if we can find that gold rumored to be down there? Cats strung up on high poles. Dead bats nailed over doorways. Bitter herb from pipes in hammocks strung up. That’s how you paint a fucking picture. 

“That’s not enough for me, Bryce!” Well, ok fuckwit  How about a hook to go with that? You get one locale in town, the temple of Murtar. Five wrinkled old men in lots of rings and necklaces endlessly polish an idol sitting behind a ragged leather curtain; a naked obese human figure. They need the sacred oils to polish their idol, a tenant. Here’s some cash, the Cloister is rumoured to have some. Oh, and here’s the local tax seal to help you get it. Fuck yeah man! Tax seal! Oh, and a raft with supplies to navigate the swamp. But, also, TAX SEAL! The players should be DROOLING. And a hook that motivates the players is the best kind of hook. 

We raft our way through the swamp, taking in the local sights and hopefully avoiding most of the local vermin. In the swamp are a few folk to talk to. A wizard-lady, loosely allied with the Cloister. At least enough to know that if they get pissed off she’s first on their list so better suck up a bit. Also an old swamp hermit dude, straight outta Maine, who MIGHT show up at an opportune moment later if the party aren’t asshats. And, a couple of half orc villages. Some nice social commentary there, putting them even further on the outskirts of civilization … with lives that are in no way worse off, it seems, than the lazy fucks in town. But, also, we get two fine examples of using that fucking tax seal. In the first village the party must sit in judgment, as is their duty, on local disputes. “Stinkegg, a youth, has broken all of his neighbors clay jugs, but did so when both the sun and moon rested, and thus, no witness from the sky could see the deed. What is the judgment?” And so on. My favorite being a marriage, dowry, and bigamist, and … I don’t know what else. It’s a doozy of a case. Lots of fun and an example of heavy hangs the head. The second being realpolotik: the second village resists your authority unless you prove your might in the combat in the frog pit. That seal is only a symbol. And a symbol is only as good as the ass kicking it represents. You pay your taxes because of the coercion of force, with perhaps the bargain that if you do then there will be less force in the future. Anyway, great swamp encounters, with one or two that could prove quite deadly. In an instant if something goes wrong.

Let us imagine you are exploring a dungeon and encounter a room and are hit by a fear spell. Most, if not all of the party flee. Randomly. Thus impacted, they end up generally alone in other very deadly situations. This has been the story of my most memorable TPK’s, both in playing and DM’ing. But, imagine, you are a well organized group confronting obstacles… and then something goes WRONG. Can you still survive in that situation? And thus, our main dungeon …

The cloister, proper, as two building complexes, with a ruined one in between them, with dungeons beneath both. There are, I don’t know, eight entrances? From the two building complexes to trapsdoors in the ruins to cave entrances in the hillside it sits upon. This is a complex. The little map feels like a real place, with all of the complexities that has with various entrances. I once lived in a house with eighteen doors. EIGHTEEN. And that’s OUTSIDE doors. Life is weird. And this map reflects that complexity. 

So, it’s a church. An evil church, but still a church. Show up during the day and maybe pray or something. At night we’ve got a black mass or two going on. Makes sense. You’ve got like eight guards, four priests, sixteen zombies and an evil high priest to deal with. Doesn’t seem too bad. On the surface. Hopefully the parties alpha strike goes off well. Anyway the place is a working church, albeit in decline, and is stuffed with goodies to steal … a lot of which are going to require some raft management to get out because of their bulk and/or cumbersome nature. But then, underneath the cloister, comes the crypts and high temple areas. And man, you do NOT want to go messing about with those sealed off tombs. Especially not while the Abbot and his dudes are still running about. There is some shit in them that will FUCK. THE. PARTY. UP. I hope you nuked the main idol with some holy water to get rid of that unhallow spell surround the cloister. You’re gonna need all the help you can get.

People in the swamp to talk to, and in the cloister also. Traps to fuck you up. Shit to play with, including Ye Olde Statues. A running battle. Enough interactivity to choke a troop of horses. And writing that is terse: “Casks of sour wine stand in the recesses of this vaulted moldy cellar.”

This is exactly the kind of thing you want in your game, and to run. Sure, I can quibble about the large map, or small maps. And sometimes the formatting and editing could place a little more emphasis on scanning, and I prefer my reference material in easy to view places, but those would simply be icing on the cake. This is a great adventure.

The print version, with PDF, is $10 at the BigCartel storefront. 

https://emdt.bigcartel.com/product/cloister-of-the-frog-god

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews, The Best | 13 Comments

The Webs of Past and Present

Posted on March 4, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Gabor Csomos
First Hungarian d20 Society
OSR
Levels 4-5

A group of adventurers took a job they were unable to finish. They went into the ruins of Túr Eridenal, an abandoned elven palace of some kind, and never returned. The characters’ mission is to find out what happened to them, rescue the survivors, and – if possible – finish the job they started. Besides the predatory creature the adventurers were hunting, the ruins are overrun with all kinds of monsters, and corrupted by a sinister curse. There are survivors, however, whom the party may rescue if they are smart… even more than just some lost adventurers. All shall be caught in… The Webs of Past and Present!

This 26 page digest presents a two level elven manor with about forty rooms. It’s got that OD&D vibe with idiosyncratic things and a natural way of encountering things in the dungeon that just make sense. Decent writing, terse, with good descriptions and interactivity that seems effortlessly varied. This is the way you do an adventure.

Nostalgia is a terrible thing, smoothing over rough edges and amping up the joy. When you think back on old adventures, Thracia, Dark Tower, Amber, Silver Princess, Wilderlands … there is this kind of wonder you experience in your memories. Those products, or at a minimum the memories we carry of those products, conveyed a sense of D&D that feel things can match. Some  kind of deadly whimsy? Or a sense that you were in another world experiencing weird things? Certainly you’ve entered the mythic underworld, as the DM, and are experiencing a kind of heightened reality. I don’t quite know how to put it. But I know it when I see it. And this adventure does the exact the same thing. Except it doesn’t have the benefit of the beer googles of nostalgia. Looking at this with the much stricter standards of today, this thing lives up to those grandiose memories of past. And it does it while bringing all of the knowledge of the past forty year to bear on itself. Effortlessly and seamlessly.

It’s an elf manor, a place for elves to go to regain their joy for the world when they grow too weary of the Works Of Man. Or, it was, a couple of hundred years ago, before some asshat elf fucked the place up by doing the whole Summon A Cosmic Entitiy to Deal with Mankind thing, that elves are wont to do. The manor falls to nature and the vermin set up shop. In this case, spiders, mostly. (Although, man, fuck those giants wasps!) So, the sad ending of a bunch of elves, with some nature and evil mixed in. And, I must say, this thing does the melancholy end of the elves quite well. Capturing the majesty and ruin, a kind of sadness, suicides and such. As well as the glory of the elven MAGIC ITEMS!!! 

This thing does vibes GOOOOOOD. Its full of that fourth pillar, design. Things in this make sense. To a degree seldom seen in adventures. Mostly it’s all “let me pick a monster from the book and slap it in.” But not in this. Shit makes sense to be there. The vargouilles. That’s not what they are. They are the heads and entrails of dead elves. And you can run them like vargouilles. Or, the giants wasps. Those fucking giant wasps. Outside the manor, as you perhaps creep to find balconies and terraces as alternate entry or to perhaps avoid an encounter or corridor. There they fucking are! Assholes. And of you fuck with a body they’ve killed perhaps it explodes with babyones swarming out! Or, if you’re inside the manor, next to a giant wasp encounter outside, and open the window then the fucking wasps come in. Of course they do! That’s what SHOULD happen! It makes so much sense. Or, magical runes on a door, barely visible. Want to disarm them? Just smear them. Duh! There’s a ladies bath area, a spa thingy. With skeletons in it. And a vial, a potion. What kind? Poison, duh! They fucking killed themselves in the bath! Shit makes sense, it’s not disconnected from itself. There is just tons and tons and tons of interactivity in this, from puzzles to things to fuck with to MEANINGFUL things to figure out. And, of course, a stalking monster that is gonna FUCK. THE. PARTY. UP. Really good job with that one. And, an ending room that turns the adventure upside down for play again. You can run back and forth across this place, inside and out (there’s a small section of grounds covered also) and it all FEELS like a D&D adventure. A glorious glorious D&D adventure. Imagination first and then the fucking book stats.

Magic items kick ass. Book, with a few words more to bring them to life. A +3 shield so gleaming you can use it as an actual mirror. A warhelm that protects you from three nat 20’s. Again, they make sense and aren’t just the same old shit everyone throws in. 

The writing here is good enough. Slender columns. Curved balconies. Overrun weeds, untended hedges. Carcasses instead of bodies, in some cases. The individual entries are by no means a masterpiece, but the overall effect is to build up a picture of the place entry after entry, and that works well. The descriptions are, however, the place where the adventure is the weakest. I do not pretend that this is easy; it’s the hardest part of an adventure, I think. They are more than workmanlike but not so good as to receive gushing amounts of praise. Which is weird. Because I’m in a gushing amounts of praise mood considering most of the rest of this. Well, some of the entries get a bit long also. There is good formatting for most of the adventure, a bolded word here or there, appropriately so, and some bullets here and there to help with things. Entries are written generally in order of importance and the order, in a room, in which the party will encounter them. If I scan an entry then the first sentence (of … on average, eight?) and a glance at the bolded words will be enough to get the room going for the players white I scan the rest, which is how an adventure should be written. This gets a bit cumbersome in some of the longer room entries, of which there are but a few. I could bitch, also, about the map in a digest sized adventure. The one in the book is a bit small and the gorgeous giant map that is included … I don’t know how to use that during play. And I prefer, for a print product, for wanderers and or reference material (the grand illusion changes?) to be someplace easily referenced .. the front and back inside covers, a fall open middle page, etc. 

A magnificent effort here. I am prone to hyperbole, but, I think you could make the case that this is the best levels 4-5 adventure written. Seriously, and if not then it’s right up at the top. Design and imagination forward. Shit makes sense. Interactive exactly the way an exploratory dungeon should be. Room after room adding to the vibe and history of the place. Easily one of the best.

This is $10 for the print & pdf version at the bigcartel web store. Normally I’d trash the dude for no preview, but the level range is on the cover and we’re dealing with a well known quantity here. Still, it would be fucking nice …

https://emdt.bigcartel.com/product/the-webs-of-past-and-present

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 4, Reviews, The Best | 18 Comments

Dirge of the Forlorn Piscator

Posted on March 2, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By G.A. Mitchell
Self Published
Journeyman, Expert, Master
Levels 1-3

A ghost is haunting the foreshores of a mountain lake, wailing despondently about his long-lost love. Eaten forty years ago by merrow, what has drawn this sad fisherman back from beyond the grave to bemoan his fate now? How will the party fare exploring a sunken fishing vessel and the labyrinthine lair of the water ogres? What is that dark, slithering doom that lies at the bottom of the cave?

This thirty page adventure presents a cave with twelve rooms. Stabbing and, potentially, talking are the orders of the day as you try to put a ghost to rest. Brief glimpses of what could be good a prevalent throughout. Expansive text for a small adventure pollutes the end result, but maybe you can ignore that?

This isn’t my style of D&D. I recognize that. It’s a kind of home-table plot D&D. You know, investigate something and end up in a lair assault killing shit. I don’t think any of it hits particularly well, in this adventure, but there are some glimpses of that OD&D style and some interesting writing here and there that I think are quite admirable and rise above the de riguour crap that floods the market today. It’s got some idea of what good is but it doesn’t really understand how to get there.

Fishing village on a BIG mountain lake. There’s a ghost been showing up lately, out on the lakeshore a bit away from town, causing some trouble. Go gettum tigers! Turns out some old lady in town is finally getting married and the ghost is the dude she loved, like sixty years earlier who died, getting eaten by merrow. Her getting married has brought him back as a ghost. That’s kind of nicely done, yeah? Oh, and now the merrow serve a dragon-thing. Oh, there’s this fucking hag in the caves also. And the shipwreck, of the ghost dudes boat, it’s got a gollum hanging out in it. Ok, I think I’ve covered everything. Go meet the ghost dude, he wants to give chickula the wedding ring he had planned for her. The merrow have it, except the dragon-thin now has it. Got it?

The first ten pages are pretty much a waste, covering the town/village. There’s a decent little timeline, of the ghost causing trouble, but that’s about it. “Townfolk drowning themselves in the lake” is a nice little bit of it. And the adventure pulls shit from time to time, really reveling in the naturalism or realism of the things going on. A lock of hair given to a ship captain, now dead, summoning a nereid, who is thankful to know what happened to her dead lover. And while this is the SECOND time this theme has happened in the adventure, it’s still nifty. When the adventure is pulling out this shit it’s doing a real good job. 

But when it’s telling us about mundane shit it’s terrible. “Heimdal is the barkeep and owner of the Black Hound [Bryce-the bar]. His family once ruled over all of this region before their almost total annihilation. Heimdal is unaware of his noble blood.” That’s fucking useless. We get mundane business descriptions and NPC descriptions that don’t matter. You could have done the entire thing on one page instead of ten. The wedding is supposed to be a big deal but that’s handled in one sentence “make the upcoming wedding a big deal in the town.” Well, fuck me, how about some help and ideas making the wedding a big deal? There’s a rumour table but the rumours are a little too direct and on the noose for my tastes. 

There are some really good descriptions, though, in the text. Or, close to really good anyway. The ghost is “ bloated, damp, ugly. While ethereal in nature and surrounded by a dull lambent glow, his form resembles that of a drowned corpse, and he speaks in wet, slurping tone” Not a bad monster description! Or, in a partially sunkn ship, knee-deep murky water in a bedroom with a few old bits of wood bobbing in the decaying mess. Bobbing is a great word there! A coppery stench of blood and buzzing of flies, in the cannibalistic merrows dining room. Or, in total, “The coppery stench of blood and the faint buzzing of flies conveys the ominous character of this chamber. This long room sports a sizable table atop which lay the discarded bones and scattered remains of the merrows’ previous victims” Great start to the description and a total train wreck to finish it off. Scattered remains of previous victims. Pffft. And this is what I mean when I say its got some kind of general understanding of what good is but little clue in how to get there. 

Long Italics read-aloud and half page room descriptions/DM text full of mechanics. I guess I’ll ignore that for the purposes of this review. 

But, the interactivity, I don’t think I can ignore. This is not a traditional dungeon. Most of the interactivity is either stabbing shit or, maybe, trying to talk to someone. Talk to gollum, maybe. Or talk to the merrow king, after hacking your way to him, so he can ask you to kill the dragon. Oh, and that fucking hag. SHe’s the dragons Mouth of Sauron. She’s got these scrolls of deals shes made with villagers. Pretty cool! She has traded shit for things like a pail full of breastmilk in return. Noice! She’ll trade with you also … which could help out with the dragon fight. Cover yourself in spikes to prevent the snake-like dragon from squeezing you, or cover yourself in milk to prevent his breath weapon (give yous a +4 to saves, not too shabby! Very folklore, and I love that! But, also, the merrow dude, the hag and the dragon are all withing earshot of each other. SO there’s no real room to breathe int he dungeon/lair. And no one really cares if the dudes next door are getting slaughtered, so no order of battle, and, worse, they explicitly DO NOT CARE if you are killing the others. That’s a little rough. 

So, a kind of plot, but the details of it, and the window dressing of the village and wedding are not covered well. Beefing that up, to cement a real vibe there, would have done wonders for motivations and grounding. The shipwreck and merrow caves are a little … mundane? Typical D&D? But there are brief glimpses of something deeper and hints of folklore scattered throughout. Again, not really enough to ground the adventure in that but enough to make you wish it HAD done that. 

Maybe next time?

This is $5 at DriveThru. The eleven page preview shows you town and the overview of the shipwreck. You can see some glimpses of the folklore-ish naturalism, but a page of the merrow caves, or shipwreck interior, should have been included as well to get a vibe for how the actual room encounters were handled.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/471069/dirge-of-the-forlorn-piscator-cam1?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments