Tower of the Stargazer

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by James Edwar Raggi, IV
for Lamentations of the FLame Princess
LotFP/D&D
Introductory characters

Legends tell of a wizard so arrogant that he felt the entire sky was naught but a lens for him to view the stars. So great was the hubris and defiance of this man that the gods smote him with the power of storm and fire. Oh did the wizard laugh at such a pathetic gesture. He did not fear the gods, for he drew his knowledge from something greater. Something darker The legend of this wizard grew, first whispered by men in fear, and later in awe. The wizard, they said, attacked the gods just as they had attacked him. And his joy only grew as the land around him died. But then there was no more news. No more talk. Something had finally brought the wizard low, for though the sky still blazed down on him and his abode, he no longer blazed back. And now you’re going to walk right through this wizard’s front door.

Stargazer is very good and can be very deadly, in spite of the low creature count. It’s one of my favorite modules to run at cons. Unlike most of what I review, I HAVE run this. About 20 times.

The module is in digest format and sometimes manages to squeeze three entries to page. Raggi does like to fill a room with words, ad there’s a little bit of this that goes on in the module. Unlike many 3.x modules though it doesn’t feel TOO excessive. Many 3.x modules feel like they are being padded in order to exploit a ‘cents per word’ payment rate by the publisher. In this product though it feels lie it’s genuine excitement over the room and setting. The module is also meant to be a kind of introductory work and thus there are some extensive notes in certain areas. These are a kind of combination designers notes and advice to the DM; advice both on how to run the room and the design behind it, in order to guide a new DM and help them run better games in the future. I LOVE designers notes and don’t really have too much of a problem with them being integrated in to the main text. The advice also does a decent job of conveying the feel the designer is going for. Most games are shooting for a certain feel and it can frequently be difficult to figure out what that feel is. This helps.

Stargazer only has about 26 rooms, spread out over the seven levels of a wizards tower. Each level only has three of four encounters in it however it manages to deliver a good Exploration feeling, the kind that’s very rare in a setting with so few rooms. It does this primarily through two mechanisms. First, it’s the tower of a reprobate wizard, and thus there are many strange, bizarre, and weird things in it. This does an excellent job of setting the mood of the various rooms. Secondly, there are multiple ways around many of the levels. Three of the levels are only accessible through a levitating platform, and two of the levels are NOT accessible through that platform. Three levels also have no stair access while two levels only have stair access and two levels are connected by multiple ‘stairs’ and have areas not accessible by the other stairway. This map complexity to some decent Exploration elements in the tower, which, combined with the atmosphere, leads to the players not quite knowing what’s around the next corner, even when it’s obvious there is no next corner. Eventually though this leads to “find the missing room” syndrome, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The players get to experience both the mystery of the tower AND have a mostly-satisified feeling of having explored everything.

This being Raggi-land, the module is short on opponents and full on weird and death-traps. There is not, though, a feeling that the traps are arbitrary or unfair. Carry a ten-foot pole though a lightning field and take your chances. Go through the eighteen steps required to use the telescope and suffer the consequences. Perhaps the only borderline example is the front-door, but even then it can serve as a good example of how old-school play proceeds and it certainly sets the stage for what is to follow. I don’t have problem with it since I use this frequently in con games with a boat-load of pre-gens available as replacement characters.

There is a SHIT-ton of stuff to play with in this adventure. Lots of stuff to drink, or to open, or to mess with. Some good, some bad, and almost all of it weird. I LOVE this kind of stuff and this is what OD&D means to me. It’s the weird and strange and its use to invoke a sense of mystery in the players. There’s absolutely no telling what some of this stuff will do. This instills a kind of apprehension in the players and keeps them off balance. It’s terribly hard to min-max things through the rules when encountering the weird and non-standard. Almost every room has something interesting in it. I particularly like the crate room, the anatomy room and the wizards room. The wizards room, in particular, provides an enormous amount of fun in running, both for the players and the DM, in my experiences. The players generally think they are getting one over on the DM and the wizard is A LOT of fun to role-play. I only recall there being five monsters in the module, two which are NICELY bizarre and two of which are classics. It’s not a combat-heavy affair.

The only criticism I have is that it can sometimes be a bit slow. Most of the combat encounters are clustered in the same area. This can lead the rest of the tower to feel a little slow.

I like this module a lot. I keep it in my “quick-start” kit, along with Death Frost Doom, Tomb of the Iron God, and Shadowbrook manor. Those four choices, along with a pad of graph paper, a big stack of 1st-level pre-gens, the magenta D&D basic book, and dice-pencils make for a PERFECT “zero effort” D&D kit. This module, along with that kit, makes it possible to play D&D IMMEDIATELY. Anything that lets you play more D&D is a good thing.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/82999/Tower-of-the-Stargazer?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 12 Comments

Isle of the Unknown aka “A Comparison of various hex crawl settings”

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Bryce Lynch


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

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Isle of the Unknown aka “A Comparison of various hex crawl settings”

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

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

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

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

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Under Pashuvanam’s Lush

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Bryce Lynch


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

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Under Pashuvanam’s Lush

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

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

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The God that Crawls

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by James Edward Raggi, IV
for Lamentations of the Flame Princess
LotFP/D&D

A murdering cult. A religious order dedicated to protecting sacred history. An ancient catacomb full of danger and reward.

It’s a Raggi adventure and that means there’s a deathtrap involved. Also, like most Raggi adventurers, the players are pushing their luck to grab as much loot as they can before the deathtrap hits. It’s a one-trick pony but its pretty good at its one trick.

There’s this set of catacombs under an obscure church in Dover in 1615ish. Nosy PCs will either go explore it themselves or get drugged/forced by the townspeople in to the pit and catacombs. There they will find The God that Crawls who will chase them around. The party will pick up loot, try and avoid the monster, and try and find a way out.

The God is not actually a god. He’s Saint Augustine, the first bishop of Canterbury. He’s been transformed in to some mindless slime/otyugh/hentai monster. The catacombs were a place where the romans hid treasure and the early church stuffed away embarrassing things. Until, at least, Augustine got stuffed down there. Now the blob wanders around leaving slime trails and enveloping anything it runs across. The priest and his congregation are in on it. They are ideal religious people except for the whole must-keep-the-secret-safe conspiracy thing. Raggi seems to do this sort of thing a lot. People hold strong convictions, are good and moral, except for the awful dark secret that they keep. It does provide a nice moral juxtaposition to encounter during play and illustrates why humans are the ideal humanoid bad-guy type: they are a lot more relatable. It also forces of the issue of morality to come up in game. I generally avoid that if the group likes to “do what their character would do” and push it to the fore-front if they are nice party of murder-hobos. Anyway, Augestine/The Monster will chase the party around in the catacombs with his 30′ movement and 90hp until the party kills him or escapes.

The catacombs have three levels and are full of disconnected areas and multiple stairs between the levels. It has long linear corridors broken up up a hand full of decision points. It’s a pretty good “maze but-not-a-maze” map and works well for a long chase. There are a lot of stairs between the various levels but most are on a kind of linear path. Most of the floors have a slime trail and there are only a few dead-end areas in the map, perfect places to be confronted by The God. The push-your-luck mechanism comes in the form of the loot, and noise in general. The more noise the party makes the higher the chances The God is going to find them. But finding the loot, and interacting with the dungeon, is going to make noise. More loot also means slower movement and a greater chance that The God will envelop the character. The various aspects of the adventure all fit together pretty well and add up more than the sum of the parts, I suspect.

There’s really only two monsters: the villagers and The God. This fits well with Raggi’s philosophy of monsters being Monstrous and everything else being a human. It’s a good schtick and works well in a human-centric campaign. The players probably won’t be taking on the godly villagers and The God is bizarre enough to provide a good contrast and a frightening/looming opponent, always at the edge of the players thoughts as they explore.

The loot sees more Raggi traditions appearing. Most of the loot is coin and goods with a bit of magic consumables thrown in. Potions and scrolls and the like show up a lot in Raggi adventures and serve to illustrate the temporary, and weak, nature of typical magic. The REAL magic items are generally few and far between, are uber-powerful, and come with a host of drawbacks. Weird fantasy at it’s finest. Recall that the catacombs were a dumping ground for things Holy Rome wanted to forget about? Yeah … there’s a lot of stuff down here. In particular there are two rooms that the players _might_ get access to that contain a lot of bizarre and powerful items. Push your luck enough and you get access to host of powerful items. The Spear of Longinus! An oracular toad in a jar. Deadly poisons! Scrolls full of strange powerful rituals. A book that can destroy the universe! Lots of unique items with lots of opportunities for the players to kill themselves. Including some “no-save just die” items.

The most important parts of this adventure are going to the the atmosphere the DM creates and the chase rules. If those are handled well then you shove a decent adventure. It IS too long for what it is; the intro is something like six pages long and flogs the same ideas over and over again.There’s only about 35 encounter areas in a 46-page booklet … Raggi does like to talk. You can get a decent adventure out of this if you’re in the mood for a chase.

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Barrowmaze II

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Greg Gillespie
Self-Published
Labyrinth Lord
Mid-High Levels

Hidden in Barrowmaze for centuries, the dark power of The Tablet of Chaos has called the dead to rise from their graves. Nergal’s unholy relic must be destroyed but few have explored deep enough (or lived long enough) to reach it. Can you survive the long dark of Barrowmaze and destroy The Tablet of Chaos?

It’s good, but not as good as the first one. Still worth having.

Barrowmaze is a giant dungeon. Unlike most traditional dungeons is doesn’t have multiple levels; it sprawls out over one level. Hmmm, maybe that should be two levels if the surface is counted. While the original Barrowmaze detailed about 16 barrows on the surface this sequel expands this to fifty, and includes rules for generating more. This allows for a MASSIVE barrowfield above the dungeon complex. This also allows for the inclusion of multiple entrances. Several of the mounds have separate entrances to the dungeon. Multiple entrances are absolutely crucial for a large dungeon. Without them the episodic nature of the dungeon is sundered and the players loose the ability to skip over sections and be enthralled by the mysterious new place they have descended in to. The maps proper are nicely done with a decent amount of loops and detail. Pits, columns, statues, secret doors, bricked up doors, same-level stairs, pools, oddly shaped rooms, etc, all add to the variety of the dungeon.

There’s a decent number of factions in the dungeon. These range from two competing priesthoods, the original priesthood and mongrelmen slaves. There’s also a small army of other individuals and groups running around. Harpy packs, gargoyle packs, intelligent “good” undead, and others all combine to allow for a decent amount of role-playing in the dungeon and break up the hacking. There’s also a good variety to the mundane treasure with lots of details on the goodies to be gained, as well as a decent amount of variety in the magical treasure. There are STILL too many “+2 longsword” type items in the dungeon but there do seem to be more “with a lion crest on it” or “+2/+3 vs chaos” magical items in the dungeon. Things do occasionally go weirder, such as using the contents of canopic jars for medicinal purposes/healing or the wide variety of rune stones, amulets, and death masks available to find. The mini-rules expansions for breaking down walls, searching catacomb niches and others add a decent amount of variety to the adventure and give it its own flavor that the players should remember for quite some time. There’s also a wide variety of new monsters, just as there was in Barrowmaze 1, to confound and challenge your players.

What’s missing seems to be in the individual encounters. The first installment had a certain … joie de vie? in the encounters that this one seems to be missing. The encounters and room description in 1 seemed to be shorter with a certain ‘naturalistic’ flair. There were signs of other people having explored the tombs. Dead adventurers. Some of the monsters encountered were in the act of doing things. That doesn’t come through very well in this sequel. There’s an encounter or two that buck this trend but for the most part it’s just undead in tombs that attack or attack when their tomb is looted. That’s a bit disappointing. Those encounters really helped bring the first module to life and added extra dimensions to it. It felt like a real place. This one feels a bit more like ‘just another dungeon.’

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/105200/Barrowmaze-II?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 5, No Regerts, Reviews | 14 Comments

The Magnificent Joop van Ooms

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

We are not amused.

I don’t review supplements. I have no interest in them. This is a supplement. It’s advertised as an adventure. It is not an adventure. It describes a 6th level magic-user. It’s set in Amsterdam in 1615. That makes it useless for most users.

The booklet is 18 pages long. It describes Amsterdam. It describes Joop. It describes his two servants. Joop is an artist. He works his magic via art. There is a section for magic plays. There is a section for magic sculpture. There is a section for magic paintings. And Poetry. And Architecture. And Engineering. You get a description of his house. It has five levels. It has nine rooms. The descriptions are short. And boring. “He keep his room spotless.” “There is a wine cellar here.” Why bother with descriptions? There are tables for buying & selling on the black market. They are mundane, just describing how much you get for an item. There is a single fifty-entry table that describes some random things that can happen on the docks. This is the only interesting section of the book and could be lifted for use in any city. The last page of the ‘adventure’ has about 13 adventure seeds on it. “Joops goes back in time and sends messages” “Joop wants to meet the players.” “Someones Joop-designed house is being weird.”

I FUCKING HATE these sorts of things. It’s nothing more than an 18 page description of an NPC. I don’t want that stuff and try to avoid it. This was listed as an adventure though so I purchased it. Mistake, obviously. I’m not even sure why this exists as an product. An 18 page description of an NPC? And 1615 D&D? I know people push settings but that’s going a little far. Maybe you could use it in 7th Sea, but then again it’s still an 18 page description of an NPC. I’m not even sure it’s possible to review a product like this one. “Dear Sir: I purchased your laundry detergent. I found a bonsai tree inside.”?!

You can savage maybe two things more this book. The first is the events tables for the docks. An opium warehouse catches fire. A slave ship is having a sale. A mermaid is looking for a lover. Lightning strike. or … “Everybody dies. Seriously. Roll up new characters. Amsterdam is wiped from the face of the earth.” Yes, that’s an actual entry. I’m not going to begrudge the designer his little jokes, especially with other entries like “The Preaching Prostitute” and ‘Beer & Cheese festival” are on the same table. It’s a decent table and good for a city-based game.

The other thing to salvage is … the design? of Joop. He’s listed as a 6th level magic-user but he has no spells. Everything is done via his art, architecture, engineering, etc. This can be expanded on, especially if you ignore the line that says he’s sixth level. Make an NPC magic-user and give him some powers. Don’t worry about ‘spells’ or designing them like an NPC Just create some weird ass shit that they can do. Magic is mysterious, yo!

Other than that … this book kind of sucks. The setting is so niche and I find it a great turn-off. The whole thing could have been summed up something closer to “a liberal try-sexual magic-users in 1615 Amsterdam.”

And it’s not an Adventure!

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/105951/The-Magnificent-Joop-van-Ooms?affiliate_id=1892600

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Barrowmaze

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

Greg Gillespie
Self-Published
Labyrinth Lord
1st-…5th level?

Local villagers whisper of a mysterious place deep in the marsh – a place shrouded in mist and dotted with barrow mounds, ruined columns, and standing stones. The tomb-robbers who explore beneath the mounds – or rather the few who return – tell tales of labyrinthine passages, magnificent grave goods, and terrifying creatures waiting in the dark. Are you brave (or foolish) enough to enter the Barrowmaze?

Barrowmaze is the real deal. It delivers. Its not weird. It’s not gonzo. It doesn’t deliver that idiosyncratic OD&D feel. It does feel real; it’s pretty internally consistent. And it’s a GREAT environment to explore with your buddies on a friday night. Err … lots of friday nights … this dungeon is HUGE. This is worth having, and I don’t say that about many products.

This is a strange product to review because it fills a strange niche. It’s not a megadungeon like Stonehell. It’s not a mini-dungeon like the VAST majority of nonsense published. It instead fills some gap between the two. Many Gates of the Gann, WG5, ASE1, G1-2-3 (taken together) and S3 all kind of fall in to the same category. These are large enough to support many nights of play and offer a decent exploration element, with the mystery and unknown that delivers, but are still self-contained products. There’s a clear beginning and ending, unlike a megadungeon. The players can get it in to trouble and see the results of their actions in a way not possible in shorter products. And this is a very good thing indeed.

The introductory text is .. thorough? It’s five pages long. We’re not forced to sit through short fictions though. The dungeon history section is only one column long, and in large type also. Most of the rest of the introduction details unusual features of the dungeon. A large part of the dungeon is burial crypts with burial niches. There is a short section on how to handle things when the party searches a room with 300 niches on the wall: how long it takes, what happens with the wanderers, and what they find. Other sections include things like “breaking down sealed up tombs with sledgehammers” and “what happens when you a read a tablet covered in runes”, both of which will not be uncommon occurrences. The DM is presented with a decent number of sections with advice on fear, time, restocking, etc. This is all wonderful to see. Taken together it presents a vivd picture of what exploring THIS dungeon is like. The elements that are going to make is unique and stand out in the minds of the players. That’s a very nice element. It also presents some new rules for turning. I’m happy to see this, especially in a module with so much undead in it. As I’ve ranted before, Turning is the only element of D&D that I’m unhappy with. The unlimited nature and ease of turning undead has turned an iconic monster, the skeleton, in to something else. In Barrowmaze all undead turning takes place one step more difficult on the chart AND each additional turn attempt is 1 point harder. This resets every day. This puts turning in the ‘resource management’ camp just like spells, torches, wandering monsters checks, and the rest. There’s additional tension as the cleric is biting his nails trying to decide to turn now or save it for later. D&D is one of the ultimate “push your luck” games.

The Barrowmaze map is FRIGGING AWESOME! It’s HUGE! It’s ginormous! It’s got like 190 keyed encounters on it, but that ignores the fact that many encounters have sub-rooms. A, b, c, d, etc. Or, actually, 142 D1, 142 D2, 142 Q3, 142 D4, etc. The mapping is dense with rooms almost on top of each other and almost all of 2.5 pages taken up with rooms. It’s an excellent example of dungeon level design. There are several “sub-sections” with their own feels, varied room shapes, a WIDE variety of secret doors, numerous pits, portcullises, etc. It is GREAT! Loops are everywhere! I like these sorts of maps for two reason. First, the loops present an environment where the party can go around certain encounters. They can ambush monsters or get ambushed by monsters. They can flee in to the dark. This is an important part to presenting a lifelike, but fun, environment and also in presented the players with choices. Secondly, the complexity of the map lends an air of mystery to it. The UNKNOWN is every present. The party never knows what’s to come, what’s behind them, what they mights have missed, and so on. This is only possible, IMO, on a complex map. I think players quickly get a strong feeling about the map; weather it’s complex or not, and this sets up some feelings in them. The two extremes here are “let’s go left and clear that out” and “oh shit! I’m freaking out! Do we go left or right?!!” In the first example the group is methodically exploring and clearing and is not really immersed. In the second the group is fully immersed. It’s this second feeling that these complex maps help invoke. [My best experience of this was in a Rients game at GaryCon 2012. I truly had NO IDEA where we were or what was down those hallways. It was A W E S O M E!] Each section of the dungeon has it’s own wanderers table (undead & vermin heavy) and I’m happy to say that NPC parties show up! I LOVE NPC parties in my dungeons! They offer an opportunity for roleplay and significantly different combats than the party is used to. They also have a different feel to them that makes the party more emotionally connected, I believe.

The encounters here are pretty decent. Just like the wandering tables the rooms are dominated by undead and vermin. Skeletons, rats, spiders and zombies, oozes and shadows. These are augmented by factions within the dungeon. There are at least three major groups in the dungeon, and that doesn’t count the undead, the intelligent undead, the NPC parties or the independents. This allows for a great deal of interaction. There are a great many opportunities to roleplay and to get yourself in to trouble without ever having to draw your sword. Most of the rooms have some little detail that can help the DM’s imagination. Impaled adventurers, drag marks on the floor, a nest and rubble pile, etc. These little tidbits help me as a DM add extra flavor and variety to the room. It’s just enough information to get the juices flowing. I’m not sure any of it it feels arbitrary either. It’s not just random dungeon dressing but rather it seems to make sense in the context its presented it. This is EXACTLY what I’m looking for in a module. The room descriptions are terse (12-15 rooms to a page) and yet give me what I need to help me run a game. No wading through mountains of text and no spoon-feeding, just good assistance. There are also a couple of other things which should be noted. A great many of the rooms have the occupants DOING something. A zombie stabs at a wall, beetles feed on lichen, or two ghouls argue over who gets to eat a tasty morsel. These sorts of encounters help the dungeon seem like a real living place. They bring it to life and make it seem like it has an existence outside of the parties interaction with it. Secondly, there are A LOT of dead adventurers in this place. Impaled. Gutted. Crawled in to a hole a dies from wounds. You get the picture, A LOT. This, along with the living NPC parties, also helps give the place a sort of living history outside of the party. It also helps to serve to up the tension level as the parties imaginations run wild. There are good traps, good tricks/specials, clues scattered about to other areas, and a real feeling that something is going on in this place.

There’s a decent variety to the monsters. In addition to Zombies we also get Funeral Pyre Zombies, Ju Ju Zombies and Ravenous Zombies. In addition to skeletons we also get Sapphire, Fossil, and Exploding Bone Skeletons. There is also something like four pages of OGL credits to handle all of the imports from other products. The monsters mix things up enough to keep the party on their toes and yet it never feels like a random assortment. The magical treasures are a mixed lot. There are a few unique items and several of the more unusual items, such as +1/+2 vs humanoids, and he like. There’s a skull that shoots out rays like a Wand of Paralyzation, and a few of the magic shields have standards on them like “a silver tree” or some such. While I do generally like my magic with more details and a bit more non-standard, this is a good amount of details for a product without an OD&D feel to it.

It’s big. It makes sense. It’s full of great encounters. Go get it and play it!

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/139762/Barrowmaze-Complete?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 3 Comments