tenfootpole.org

by Thomas J. Scott
for Magique Productions Inc
OSRIC
Levels 2-3

Misty Ridge has been threatened by mysterious raiders that come at night and loot homes and businesses. Most who have crossed paths with the raiders have been slain without mercy. Those rare few who have survived an encounter with the raiders describe them as ferocious, gray-skinned creatures that blend with the mists and move with deadly silence. The Regent of nearby Geldhart has been notified of the problem and he has sent the PCs to investigate and deal with the matter. Can the player characters solve the mystery of the Dark Raiders and restore peace to the once quiet retirement village of Misty Ridge?

So, here’s a question for you, Gentle Readers. I strongly dislike High Fantasy. You know, those kind of magical economy worlds for clerics casting continual light spells on rocks for streetlamps, the wizards guild who is on duty to clean up the sewers and keep the guards and wards fresh, the proliferation of archeologists and adventurer guilds, quiet retirement villages, and an explanation and justification for everything magical so that nothing is mysterious. I hate this stuff. If I buy a product that proudly advertises itself as High Fantasy can I justify criticizing it as High Fantasy?

Right, Wrong, I’m the guy with the keyboard. Realms of Arkonus is a High Fantasy setting. This adventure is set in a quite retirement community full of wealthy old people with extensive collections of rare things. Stamps. Coins. Paintings. These extremely wealth, and therefore presumably powerful, people have no personal guards. And there is no town guard. Perhaps because of this they are now finding themselves the victims of thefts. Oh, and murder; the thieves have killed on more than one occasion. Rather than hiring some guards or pressing some of his staff in to service, Lord Eridahl decides to fulfill his lordly contract with the people under his protection by instead spending 4000-6000 gp to send the party on the job. I will now avoid explaining how Feudalism works so as to not appear to be the kind of nit-picky know-it-all reviewer that I loathe.

The party arrives and is introduced to the villagers during a meeting, and they now have an opportunity to question the villagers about the raids. The one nice thing in this section is that when introduced the elder also talks a little about each characters exploits, giving the villagers something to ooh and aah about. This is a pretty nice detail. It gives the party something to feel special about and it includes the concept that their actions have meaning. When they burn down a village people will hear about it. When they kill a band of bandits people will hear about it. It gives the world a bit of continuity. It also probably make the party more inclined to helped the villagers, and this module needs all of that it can get. There’s not much provided in the way of details for the DM to hand out to the party. No names of the looted or killed villagers. No list of what was taken, etc. BY asking around the party can learn about people spotting lizard men nearby and of a young boy who went missing after feeling them. Hmmm, and the village still hasn’t done anything? Really? Oh, I’m sorry. Yes, they did. They sent some potato diggers to look in to things, who never came back. Oh, and there’s a place to rent boats A FEW MILES OUT OF TOWN. WTF?!?! Is this New Jersey where every square inch is populated and you’re never more than 5 minutes from a business? This village literally has like 30 buildings in it and there’s a boat rental place a few miles outside of town. Whoops, showing my High Fantasy again … It’s too bad that more information is not provided about the village. Adventurers that involve towns and villages revolve around brining the NPC’s to life They need personalities and feelings about what’s going on and the other people in the village. The six short entires for the businesses in this village don’t cut it.

The party will either stake out the village at night and kill some raiders, tracking them back to their lair, or investigate the rumors of lizard men NEAR THE OLD ABANDONED CASTLE ON THE CLIFF. You know, the one with the warning sign on the cliffside that’s lit by a continual light spell? Yeah, that one. It has seven rooms. It has eom lizard men, giant ants, and a giant lizard, as well as secret tunnel to the bottom of the cliffs. Down below the party will meet the thieves and, if they can breathe water, their boss with all the stolen goods. They steal from the villagers and sell the goods to pirates who stop by regularly … you know, the ship everyone sees from time to time under the ruins that flies the pirate flag? Yeah, that one. There’s no real reason for the bandits to be lizard men and “new race” rather than humans. There’s no foreshadowing of the boss, leading to the Lareth problem. How can the party be intimidated and impressed by the bad guy if his appearance is a total surprise? “Oh, your the boss? Huh . DIE!” He’s just another thing to hack instead of the evil mastermind of this plot.

The problem with this adventure, like so many others, is that it pays too much attention to form and not enough to substance. So many of these products (weee! let’s generalize!) ape the layout, font, and format of older published adventure modules without seemingly paying much attention to creating new and interesting content. I don’t care much what your stat blocks look like. Or if your new monster section follows the format of earlier products. Or even if you got the AC and damage right for a lizard man. Enter Room. Kill Monster. Repeat. That is not fun. That is going through the motions. I don’t need a plot but I do need something for the party to do other than hack things. Poke at statues. Investigate strange pools. Talk to monsters. Set up hair-brained plans.

On the plus side there are two other things this adventure gets right. First, the party can find an old knife in the ruins that once belonged to the missing boy. Too often I think this kind of stuff is glossed over. If people have disappeared then the party should find signs of them. I don’t need graphic detail however there should be some evidence. Again, it provides a sort of continuity that makes the game world actually seem like a real place and makes it much more real for the party. Second, there’s a new monster, the Sprat. It’s cross between a giant rat and a giant spider. Ewwww! I like new monsters, non-humanoid monsters for the most part, because they keep the party guessing. “There’s no telling what that thing can do! We had better be careful!” This is he kind of mystery that adds so much to RPG’s.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/29506/Dark-Raiders-of-Misty-Ridge?affiliate_id=1892600

by Jim Baney
for Knightvision Games
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 3-4

The Western Star, sailing on a clear sea, is suddenly caught in a mysterious storm appearing out of the blue. Skies darken as fierce wind and driving rain lash at the ship, sending it crashing upon the shore of Crosskey Island. Those fortunate souls that survive must find rescue before their supply of food and water run out. Some of the passengers seem to have plans of their own. Will the “Curse of Crosskey” finally be revealed?

One of the, few, interesting things about this adventure is that I’ve seen it before. Played it, actually. It was called Souls for Smuggler’s Shiv and was produced for Pathfinder a year earlier. Both of these adventurers feature a ship that wrecks upon the shore of an island. Both feature a cast of characters stranded on the beach with the party. Both feature fellow passengers running away in to the island jungle. Both feature dwindling supplies of food and water. Both feature an initial attacks by crabs on the beach when the party wakes. Both feature a tower on the island. I played Smuggler’s Shiv, and haven’t finished it yet, so I can’t make any exhaustive comparisons however I have to say that there appear to be significant similarities, especially given the short length of this adventure. Then again there’s only so many adventure ideas. I would go get Smuggler’s Shiv however I’m still in that game.

For some reason the party is on a ship. Hired ship guards, traveling to a job, etc. The ship wrecks in a storm and the party is stranded on a beach with some of the other survivors. The first mate gathers everyone for a meeting and explains that supplies of food and water are low and there are tracks indicating that others have gone in to the jungle from the beach. Just then giant crabs shuffle out of the water and attack! And there are crabmen riding the giant crabs! After taking a leadership position the first mate is then never mentioned. Nor are any of the other NPC’s on the beach. There is a real missed opportunity here. The NPC’s just have a line description. Something like “Sailor: Bob 0 level human.” Giving the NPC’s some more background, some reactions to their fellow castaways or to their plight on the island would have added some interesting roleplaying opportunities. Presumably the party takes a leadership position and goes to find food, water, the other survivors, and a way off the island. There are three places on the island for the party to have encounters. First you’ve got the caves of the crabmen. These are likely to be empty, or mostly so, since the party has already et the occupants. Then there’s also the village of some su-monster like creatures. Finally there’s a tower with the ‘real’ adventure. The village of the su-monsters, crabmen lair, etc, are not really complicated, just a couple of rooms each. The tower has five rooms with some ‘cultists’ in it. Below this is a sea cave with the boss, food, water, and a boat. The wandering monster table only has four entries also, one of which is a pit.

The adventure doesn’t really have too much going for it. The island is sparsely populated with encounters, four, and they are very straight forward ones at that. Find the monster, fight the monster. A pit trap or the like is the most unusual thing the party is likely to encounter. One place where is does tend to succeed is in its treasure. A decent amount of the mundane treasure has some interesting descriptions. A ruby heart gem and the like. The magic treasure is quite nice. Bracers of Phasing, Rings of Thieving, Wand of Sonic Striking and the like. I like nonstandard mundane treasure because of the extra detail is provides to the adventurers. It makes the adventure seem more real. The nonstandard magical treasure likewise keeps the adventurers guessing. It provides a sense of wonder and whimsy. That exciting feeling the very first time your character ever discovered a magical item in a D&D game is invoked … What does it do? How do I find out? Where did it come from? That’s the sort of magical mystery that keeps D&D fun.

In the end this adventure is quite sparse and mundane.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/89963/CC1-Curse-of-Crosskey?affiliate_id=1892600

by Peter C. Spahn
for Small Niche Games
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 1-3

Garanton is a village like any other, except for five days out of the year when it hosts the Feast of St. Garan. During this time, fighters from abroad come to join in the revelry, mingle with other adventurers, and win fame and fortune fighting in the daily games. But all is not well in Garanton this year. Cruel orcs prowl the forest, dark wizards cast webs of treachery and deceit, and bat-winged demons fill the moonlit sky. Does your party have what it takes to ward off this evil before it consumes the entire town?

This is a pretty nice little adventure. The core concept is pretty simple: a local village is holding their yearly religious festival and some monsters attack. That has the potential of being one of the worst adventures ever. But as ever good Ameritrasher knows, it’s the Chrome that turns a boring game in to a great game. And this adventure has a pretty decent amount of chrome, and good chrome at that. With a little tweaking it could be a truly great adventure.

This adventurer is set in and around a village and their local five-day religious/harvest fair. The local church revers a local hero, Garen, even having the town named after him. During the Feast of St. Garen there are people selling things, contests, a host of diversions, groups of strangers from outside the village visiting for the festival, and the highlight: the Honor Games. The winner gets to wear the Mantle of St. Garen, a cloak, for the next year. I’ve seen a lot of these types of adventurers and most of them are not very good. They tend to forget that these are, essentially, town adventurers and town adventurers mean SOCIAL adventurers. The fun is in the people the party meet, the crazy stuff they do, how the townsfolk react to it, and the roleplaying of the party. Oh yeah, and in the middle of all of this is some Maltese Falcon that serves as a pretext for the fun. It seems like it’s hard to not turn this type of adventure in to a railroad. This adventure gets it right, for the most part. It has some nice themes, good NPCs, and a timeline of events to ground the adventure. Well, until the party starts screwing with things. 🙂

The first thing we need is a setting. In this adventure we have the festival. It’s a combination of a harvest fair with a strong religious element and the presentation and parading of the holy relics are a major part of the fair. The adventure description does a pretty good job describing the religious elements of the fair: processions, holy prayers, the basis for the festival and so on. It is pretty light on the ‘harvest’ portion of the fair, choosing instead to concentrate only on those elements that are directly related to the central, religious, themes. I really like the feel of the fair you get from the module but I also think I’m subconsciously filling in a lot of harvest fair elements. In essence, if you consider a typical medieval harvest fair AND THEN add in what’s in the module then I think you get a pretty good feel for the setting. A few more details of the rest of the fair would have been nice to flesh things out for those people without small-town midwest backgrounds, but I still think it does a decent job of setting up nicely evocative place … even if the village is completely ignored, as is the meadow where the fair takes place, as it almost every other element of the fair. 🙂

The next element, the NPC’s, is almost certainly the most important. Town games live or die by the quality of their NPC’s. This one does a pretty good job. We get about 30 different NPS’c of note described to us. This consists of a short paragraph of text that notes their goals, personality, and motivation and a pretty decent stat block of six or so lines. Some of these NPC’s are going to be involved in the core adventure and some are just normal fair goers. We also get a nice contingent of fighters who are taking part in the honor games, as well as a group of actors and a small mercenary company (Yeah! Rival murder hobos!) In addition we also get a nice little table of 20 or so random festival encounters. Wandering odious bards, escaped pigs, the farmers daughter, a lost child and thieving little kids … you get the idea. These are great little additions to flesh out the festival over its five days. They add a lot of local color. The biggest problem here is that while we get a decent number of NPC’s for the party to interact with those NPC’s don’t really interact with each other. In other words, there are really no factions among the NPC’s. This is a real misstep and I’ll speak more to it later.

Finally we have the adventure proper, which takes place primarily through a timeline. If the party is out and about during the event then they may see or hear it. If not they will probably hear about it later from the festival goers as they gossip and react to it. The DM must, of course, modify the events as a reaction to the actions of the party. Essentially what you have here are normal festival events and special events with some crossover between the two. For example, during the contest of strength the party can notice some carvings on the stones. If someone gets knocked off a log during the log spinning then they could see an orc hiding downstream, and so on.

The core of the adventure is that the local legends are based around a misunderstanding. Garan didn’t defeat the evil trio in the ancient past. He was PART of the evil trio. The locals found his tomb and misunderstood the context and the carvings, elevating his to hero status instead of his well-deserved ‘Major Villain’ status. Oops! To add insult to injury the local relics are actually subtly cursed. Very Nice! How do you deal with the local head of the St Garen order, who is a great guy, when you find some evidence that his entire faith is a lie? Hoe does he, and the villagers, react to you?

There are a couple of places nearby for the players to visit as well, which is the closest the party is going to get to a traditional adventure. Garens tomb is nearby, and there’s a local carving on the cliffs of St Garen that could possibly lead to the main bad guys. And what a nice bad guy base it is. It’s simple. It’s terrifying in its implications. It’s perfect to make a low-level party, or even a higher-level party, poop their pants. And that’s GREAT! The party if not forced in to the adventure. The party gets to discover some interesting secrets and has to deal with their consequences. The party gets to look in to the face the evil and a past End of the World event. Finding thousands of petrified demons, with some reanimating, will be a GREAT encounter to watch the PC’s react to.

The adventure could be beefed up in a few ways. Garanton and the meadow are not detailed at all. The harvest festival portion, and indeed many portions of the festival are not detailed. The NPC’s listed do not have relationships with each, to any great extent. This would add a lot to the feel of the NPC’s and the feeling that things are going on around the party. In fact, a wise GM could have some starting relationships/reactions and then another chart that indicates how those reactions change over time, potentially. The Carjacked Seraphim blog had an interesting method of generating these sorts of reactions based on an NPC matrix and a scattegoriies like mechanism. Take a look at the article and reaction matrix it generates. This chart, along with a one page NOC cheat sheet, would go a long way to adding a lot of life to the adventure.

http://carjackedseraphim.blogspot.com/2012/05/polyhedral-npc-matrix-part-2.html

This adventure is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/83083/LLA001-Blood-Moon-Rising?affiliate_id=1892600

by Roderic Waibel
for Sacrosanct Games
OSRIC/Altus Adventum
Levels 18-20

In a desperate bid to bring his queen back to life, King Helthrop made a foolish pact with the demon, Astaroth. Astaroth has possessed the king, trapping him in hell. Now the party must make a journey in to hell itself to rescue the king and save the world from a demon invasion.

Why do people keep making deals with the devil if no one ever succeeds? I mean, someone must, right? Otherwise no one would ever play the game. I’d love to see an adventure about someone who tricks the devil and wins. But that’s not this one. Good King Bob made a deal with the devil and is now in hell, with the party given the task of rescuing him. “Or … hey, I’ve got an idea … let’s just kill the fake king, close the portal, and take over the kingdom! There’s, like, 6 of us and we’re all 20th level! Hell Varsuvius, you get, like what, three wishes a day, right?” The DM must then protest: “that’s not the adventure I’ve prepared, plus, it’s really cool! You get to go through the hell described in Dante’s Inferno!” Has any other book spawned as many supplements? I doubt it, and woe be unto you who sets forth on this adventure. Abandon Hope All Ye Who Play This Module!

Right, off to hell. The party now has a linear journey through hell to get to the bottom of it, find the king, and kill the demon/devil. They will be doing this while experiencing the mind-numbing joys of Dante during which they will encounter many real-world people while never ever encountering any of the christian symbolism or meaning that is central to this extremely boring and no longer relevant important work of literature. Why yes, I did take a class, in Italian, about the Inferno. Why do you ask?

The party is on a railroad. They will encounter something, “defeat it”, and then find a portal to take them to the next level/circle. There are a lot of devils who will attack on sight. There are a lot of Save or Die situations that are presented in a less-than-useful way. Essentially the party, like Dante, are on a guided tour. Meet Charon and get rid of your most beloved possession, or don’t continue the adventure. Watch the wasps of conscious sting the sufferers of self-interest. Enjoy the Forest of Souls and the scenic River Tain. Experience the hospitality of the locals as four pit fiends per party member attack. Meet Euclid, Socrates and Aristotle, along with a host of others whose names you won’t recognize. Screw you Avicenna! I prefer a wide life that’s long also! Ha! P0wn3d! This is then repeated. Meet some underworld figure, visit a few sites, and have an unavoidable fight. What’s interesting are the Save or Die situations. You enter a portal to go to the Plane of Lust. Anyone who has ever lusted must then immediately make a Save or Die or die. This is unavoidable. This earns an ‘Uncool’ rating from this reviewer. The module notes that resurrection and magic don’t work to save people. You have to go physically find someone and then use the magic. At least that’s a sandbox element, although there are no resources provided to help support those actions. There has to be some kind of warning or resources to support the style of play described. Otherwise why not just the adventure asking for six Save or Die rolls, declaring that a meteor fell of your head or some such? It’s too arbitrary.

Ok, you’ve made it through the gates, Limbo, Lust, Gluttany, Greed, Anger and Heresy. You made it through Dis, finding the one magic item in all of hell. It’s a ring with one wish at the bottom of a river of lava that runs through Dis that can be found at only one certain point in the river by someone immune to lava. Or you can just ask Varsuvius to cast Wish, since he gets 3 a day at 20th level. Let’s see, Violence, 10 bolgias of fraud, and then the frozen lake of treachery with Lucifer at the center knawing on some famous people. Whoops, nope, no central figure. Scratch that last reference. There are some more more battles in a palace on this level as well as some logic puzzles before the party gets to fight Astaroth the arch-demon. Killing him wins the adventure and the party gets their reward of 1 limited-wish each from the kings wizards. Or you could just kill everyone and take the kingdom for yourself.

My major problem with the adventure, besides the linear tour guide style, is that it’s boring and arbitrary. It sticks too literally to Inferno and there’s not enough variety in the encounters. You meet someone who immediately attacks or you meet someone who only attacks if you attack them first. Sprinkled throughout are the arbitrary Save or Die situations. It’s Hell; it shouldn’t be boring.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/88367/B1-Journey-to-Hell?affiliate_id=1892600

by Peter C. Spahn
for Small Niche Games
Labyrinth Lord
1st-3rd Levels

This is a short little Labyrinth Lord adventure module with a byzantine setup straight out of second edition. Let’s follow along: ancient humanoid race lives in caves and then gets turned to stone. Baron Bob comes along and builds a house near the caves and starts collecting artifacts from the cave. He starts a drunken party ‘cult’ for nobles based out of the caves. He dies during a party and his house goes to ruin, but the drunk sex parties continue on.

[BARFLEET!] One of the gallants steals from old jewelry and sells it. An ‘esteemed archaeologist’ buys it, find out where its from, and sets out with a group to do a dig. It’s a major find so he sends back word to obtain authorization to continue the dig. [I’m not making this shit up.] He also contacts the Adventurers Guild to hire some help to protect his dig team. The guild assigns a ‘low risk’ priority to the request and send the party. This background takes place on about two pages and is full of extra detail like “the lake is named after Bobs dead wife” and “Velron the purpose rose cast the flesh to stone spell.”

The hook here is “you get assigned the task by the adventurers guild.” Not the most engaging for the party; essentially it’s just telling them that this is the adventure they will be playing tonight. Perhaps not the best way to get people excited and engaged in a new campaign? The entire late Renaissance culture thing that is implied by artifact collectors, adventurer guilds, and esteemed archeologists is a MAJOR turn off for me. I strongly associate this with the 2E era and I LOATHE it. 7th Sea is a decent game. 7th Sea with murder hobos is NOT a decent game. The genre doesn’t work with the setting. It’s particularly strange to see it in a Labyrinth Lord module. But hey, it’s your game. Maybe you’re in to that stuff … you poor poor fool.

The cave system has fifteen rooms in it. The map is actually pretty decent. There are a couple of different ways in to the caves that the party can discover and it’s full of statues, little water features, doors at the top of stairs, cracks in the earth, ledges and the like. For being such a small map there are at least three loops in it. I find that terrain features add a lot to the game as the party negotiates them and fights in and around them. A nice looping map also allows the party, and monsters to head ’em off at the pass, set up ambushes, and flee to freedom/certain danger. This is all much more interesting than a linear crawl. This is a pretty good example of decent small map that many others could learn from.

Unfortunately the designer does almost nothing with the map. The various features and looping nature are lost because of the nature of the encounters. There are two giant lizards, a crayfish in a pool, and a ghoul in the dungeon. The crayfish doesn’t pursue and only a group of colossal idiots would free the ghoul. So, yeah, I suspect 90% of the time a party will release the ghoul. The lizards are susceptible to missile fire fro the terrain/ledges but the ghoul and crayfish are in dead-end rooms. There are two groups of people hiding in the dungeon that the party can rescue. The drunk noble sex party is hold up in a room blocked by the lizards and the esteemed archeologist is hold up in a room a bit further in. At this point there is a programmed encountered where a few of the humanoids show up and attack. Zzzz….

There’s not really anything going on in this adventure. The caves don’t really have anything meaningful to play in them. We learn that one room is where Baron Bob slipped and cracked his skull, or that another another used to be a ritual bath chamber which previously was used to blah blah blah. There’s no tree with purple fruit on it. No statue that does weird things. No gold piece glued to the floor. For all the mayhem the backstory implies (cult tries to kill archeologists, humanoids kill everyone) it’s a bit of a static environment. No real signs of a massacre or other things would indicate that someone or something is living and/or working in the caves.

There’s no real treasure to speak of. The party was hired for a certain rate and several of the NPC’s will reward the party for getting them out. An old journal might be used for some blackmail, but otherwise there is no coin and no magic items. The wandering table is nice with a variety of mundane creature, monster, and other encounters. Strange shadows, bad footing, and wandering insane cultists. Only one of the new monsters is very interesting; a watery undead who fills your lungs with water. That’s pretty cool. I like things like that since it adds variety and keeps the party guessing about the monsters they encounter. Much better than “Zombie.”

This may be a fine module to kick off a 7th Sea game, or to somehow introduce to an ongoing city game, because of the NPC’s involved. As a stand along adventure though, or a kick off for a ‘standard’ game it’s going to be lacking quite a bit.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/91740/LLA004-Atarins-Delve?affiliate_id=1892600

by Thomas J. Scott
for Magique Productions
OSRIC
Levels 10-12

The high mage has revealed the discovery of a portal opening from an evil plane. The player characters must follow his instructions to recover a pair of magical artifacts that can reverse the opening of the portal.

The original form of this adventure, Darkness Rising, was a tournament module at GenCon 25 and Origins 96. It does show its tournament roots but does a decent job of getting past that in places. The world is ending and the high mage needs the players to go on a fetch quest to grab some stuff he needs to stop it. Thus the adventure is in three parts: two fetch quests and the “stopping the end of the world” portion. I’m not a big fan of hooks which involve the players doing good for its own sake. I don’t think that motivates the actual players and takes the out of fun mode. It’s slightly different in a tournament. In that setting almost anything will do since the players are already motivated: they want to finish the module and win. That doesn’t work too well when moved over to home play. “Go save it yourself high mage dipshit; I gotta whore house to run and a POS halfling to murder!”

The three portions of the adventure are fairly distinct from each other. The first part contains a couple of very interesting ideas and one of the worst screw jobs I’ve ever seen. The players are sent to this abandoned village to get a mirror they need to close the gate to the evil dimension that is opening. On the way to the village they keep feeling these little earthquakes that are getting worse. They see a cave. Inside the cave is a slumbering tarrasque. Yes, a tarrasque. The earthquakes? The side effects of a giant slug tunneling towards the tarrasques cave, which will surely wake it when the slug gets there. I frigging LOVE this! Stop the slug or the tarrasque wakes up. I imagine a group of players simultaneously saying to themselves “holy shit!” and then COMPLETELY freaking out when the slug makes its appearance. That, my friends, is roleplaying GOLD. A fearsome monster of legend, an absurd situation, and a group of players totally loosing it. And it has nothing to do with the fetch quest. Tears of Joy.

This section continues on with the party arriving at the abandoned town. It’s full of ghostly figures who ignore and then mutter at the party member. Its presented very well and I think it’s quite the evocative setting and a great place to have an adventure. Weird shadows in the corner of your eye and angry ghostly figures … who can’t really do anything to you. While the party searches the town they are are attacked a few times by a mad cleric and perhaps a ghostly horsemen. The party eventually find the mirror in the basement of some random house (!). A vulture then swoops down and snatches it to carry it away to the graveyard. WTF?!?!?! That’s a screw job worthy of a japanese anime. I have NO idea how the designer expects to get away with that. The party is just standing around with their thumbs up their rear while it happens? It’s crazy, and not in a good way. The town and graveyard doesn’t have much interesting going on except for the harmless ghosts and the crazed cleric. There are some undead, almost all of whom turn as Fiends. I blame Gygax and those dame amulets the skeletons wore in Caves of Chaos. Ever since we’ve since undead who turn at higher levels, all with a variety of bullshit excuses. How about “I’m a lazy designer and felt I should use undead.” Just use something else, or make some new undead creatures instead of just gimping the cleric. By this time the parties cleric should be like a Pope or something and he STILL can’t turn skeletons?

The second section has the party journeying in to a land of eternal darkness and grabbing the second artifact from the giant leader. Essentially there’s a small fortress in the middle of a small village full of evil guys: goblins, gnolls, ogres, and drow. There’s a short little event at the start of this section which sets the party up for entry. There’s a whole ‘turns out the princess is evil!’ situation where the party sees some people attacking a caravan. Beyond throwing the party the one method of entry (using the caravan) it’s a wide open sandbox. The village is presented, he fortress is presented, and the reactions of the various groups within when they discover the party is noted. This is a pretty nice setup. The party has a goal (get the artifact) and he environment is presented (the village & fortress.) The various groups within are outlined, how they interact with each other and how they react to the parties presence. And then … the DM is left to run the thing. I really like how this is presented. There are truly A LOT of of creatures in the camp and a general assault is going to be rough … MAYBE doable for a 12th level party, maybe not. The entire area is a little bland, as are the interactions between the various groups. A few more real factions within the camp would have really smartened up this part of the adventure. The evil camp is also just a tad bit too organized for my tastes. Things go off a little well and the various humanoid hatreds are not played up very well. Good base concept with a kind of generic execution.

Part three deals with the inevitable betrayal of the high mage. What?!?! I know, it’s shocking. The high mage betrays the party and jumps through the portal to the evil realm. This parts starts interesting enough; there’s a lake with some demons playing in/around it and some clouds up in the sky with a fortress on it. After making their way past he water demons and the dragons in the clouds the party gets to explore the cloud castle; home to a demigod. There are only ten encounters in the castle and the party is likely to encounter 80% of them given the layout of the castle. Trudging to the end the party should find & kill the high mage, ending the adventure. Tournament module encounters usually have encounter set up in which the party can avoid the encounter or fight a monster. This module section falls neatly in to that style. A smart party will find a way to bypass things and neuter the high mage quickly. A silly party will fight monster after monster.

The last part of the module is the one that most resembles a tournament module and thus the most unsuited for home play. The first section has some interesting ideas, and the second is a huge sandbox problem. As a tournament module it would probably be fine, especially if the middle section was excluded. As a home play module the last section still has too much of that tournament feel. Expanding upon the castle would be necessary.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/56439/Advent-of-Darkness?affiliate_id=1892600

by Roderic Waibel
for Sacrosanct Games
OSRIC/Altus Adventum
Levels 6-8

Treacheries have been revealed. A desperate quest is needed to save the kingdom … with the benefit of a nice dish of vengeance served along with it.

This is the end of the story arc started back in module A1 and directly follows the events in module A3 – Hunt for the Ogre Lord. Evidentially there is some vast conspiracy thing going on and the high inquisitor is actually a traitor. The party is allied with some dude who, while he has an army, is courageous, and has long suspected the inquisitors are evil … do you want to guess? Go ahead, guess the rest. Yes, he has very little influence and can’t help the party. Shocking, I know. And thus another lame ass hook is introduced. If the players had any amount of balls they would tell the lord to go screw himself and either move to a neighboring kingdom or perhaps start a nice business where they can profiteer and make a buck off of basic foodstuffs, toilet paper and nylons. Lord McImpotent over there, the guy who won’t help, he has ties to the landed, has a title, presumably a family, and no desire to keep any of it. Our murder hobos however are supposed to go on the adventure because it’s a quest and the right thing to do. Again: the hook should appeal to the players not just the characters. Or maybe just tell them the players “this is tonights adventure. If you want to play then go on it.” While blunt it doesn’t smack of the “do good or else” theme that this hook as going for it.

“Yeah, which adventure we going on tonight Mr DM?”
“Rise of Bloodwolf, this one here.”
“Oh, the one with the werewolf on the cover. Ok. How much are silver weapons?”

This place is crawling with werewolves. Like “every encounter” crawling with werewolves. Ok, not every encounter, but almost. The idea is that the inquisitors are actually all evil evil werewolves, no one knows, and the party needs to break in to their base/fortress to discover evidence … except the party isn’t supposed to know they are werewolves.

This could have been a pretty cool adventure. The party sneaks in to the base/fortress and gathers evidence while dodging legit guard and evil conspiracy members. They find evidence of the treachery and pick up some gizmo they’d been drooling over. Kind of like some kind of Mission Impossible thing. Then the King tells them to do a James Bond Volcano lair assault on the main bad guy base. A kind of sandbox in that we have location and the party has some mission at that location. This is even supported a bit in the first fortress by the notes indicating various entrance strategies such as roof, main gates, and sewer.

But … it goes no further. Instead we get what are basically some dungeon crawls where each room has a werewolf in it. Ug. The first fortress has three levels with about seven rooms per level. The layout is some kind of linear path combined with a three room ring at points. Essentially a linear dungeon. Since there are limited ways in to the fortress then it is mostly a linear romp. The way it works is that the party enters a room, sees some people, the people change in to hybrid form and immediately attack. The party kills the werewolf, loots the room, and moves on to the next room. The human slave cook, the only slave in the fortress, is the only one who tries to run & sound the alarm. He has an amulet of protection against lycanthropy. That’s about it. Oh, there’s a great deal of coin, mundane treasure, and magic items scattered about. Ok, now that’s it. Once room has papers that suggest they are allied with the Ogre Lord from the previous adventure, because a fortress full of werewolves isn’t enough evidence.

When The King gets this evidence he does what any good king would do;: ignore it and send a band of idiots to find and kill the traitor. Why send the army, or a band of trusted earls, barons, etc? Can’t be bothered, sorry. This time the map of the fortress looks like a proper fortress with maybe 33 rooms over two levels. There are more features on the map and the various rooms break things up a bit more, although the generally design is one of a great room in the center with many branching rooms off of it. This is the clan headquarters for the werewolves so it’s crawling with them. BOTH of them. Yes, there are only two werewolves in this fortress. There are six human guards armed with +1 bastard swords and +2 chainmail. No doubt they were purchased at the +2 chainmail store. Hmmm, let’s see, two human slaves, a high priest, a succubus, a monk, a stone golem, and a couple of basilisks. A little anti-climactic for the climax of the adventure and for the series of modules. There’s also a kind of fountain of blood, but all it does is look cool. No other features of note or of interest.

There’s no new monsters to speak of, which is too bad because I like throwing new things at the party. There’s a shit ton of boring mundane treasure in the vein of: 1335 gold, 2622 silver, 8 gems @ 150 gold each, etc. There’s also A LOT of magical treasure. lyres of buildings, staves of healing, at least three +1 stat books, stone golem books, resurrection items, a metric ton of magical arms armor. In the past I’ve enjoyed seeing some unique items in the adventure and this is no exception. Necklace of the World, Gauntlets of the Beast, Circlet of Power, etc. I LOVE magical items that don’t come out of a book and these fit the bill. There’s just too much ‘normal’ magical treasure to go with it; it detracts from these new items.

The entire adventure feels a bit … empty? Two giants fortresses and just a few guards in each. The place is overflowing with treasure but nothing much guarding it and nothing much in the way of interesting areas to interact with. No factions within the wolves, no potential allies to interact with … just room after room of hybrid form werewolves.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/87613/A4-Rise-of-the-Bloodwolf?affiliate_id=1892600

by Rod Waibel
for Sacrosanct Games
OSRIC/Altus Adventum
Levels 4-6

Barely able to enjoy the spoils from your last adventure, you are soon called upon by the mysterious Inquisitors to investigate rumors of an ogre lord rallying a humanoid army on the western border of the kingdom. Promises of sacks of gold followed by veiled threats, it seems you have little choice …

This adventure hits almost all of my favorite things! Railroads! Plot! Training grounds & tests! Humanoids! Gimping the players! Poor hook! Boring rooms! Wait, no, I see what I did there. I accidentally typed ‘favorite’ instead of ‘disliked.’

There’s this ogre with an army of humanoids. He’s attacking the lands of men. King Jerkface can’t send his army to stop them (Surprise, Surprise Surprise! ) so instead he has Inquisitor Beardface threaten the party in to hunting down the ogre and killing him. The party is ambushed and captured. They are stripped and locked in a dungeon. Only wait, it’s not really a dungeon, it’s a test and training grounds! You see, it’s how the ogre lord find new subjects to recruit! But oh, he’s underestimated the party and they manage to escape, get their gear back, and resume their mission! They forge on, fighting hordes of low-level humanoids, until they join a massive battle and kill the ogre lord. Yeah!

If the party doesn’t go to the initial meeting with the Inquisitor then they’ll be persecuted. There’s an overwhelming force of humanoids present to take the party capture including just enough shamans with hold person to screw the party over. In the dungeon there’s a mysterious mist that knocks the party out. If they join up with the ogre then the Inquisitor send werewolf assassins after them THAT SAME NIGHT. The designer comes right out and says “is this railroading? Sire, but it’s part of the adventure plot and this would be short adventure without it.” No, it wouldn’t be. Do you know why? Because all of this bullshit railroading and plot and “the party dies if they try to get off the railroad” nonsense doesn’t matter at all. You see, the second half of the module deals with what are essentially mass combat battles of various sizes as the party help the local outpost commanders and face down the ogre lords army. That’s right, all of that plot and railroading CRAP has absolutely NOTHING to do with the actual adventure. I’m at a complete loss as to why it’s there.

I should probably go in to some details rather than just ranting and going apoplectic. The hook is EXTREMELY POOR. The characters are forced in to participating. This means the players are forced in to participating also. “Go on the adventure or we’ll kill you” is not a compelling hook. It’s doesn’t make the players want to have fun. They end up sighing and resigning themselves to the adventure. In my experience they also rebel. They try to kill the guy threatening them, or throw the adventure in some other way. They almost always pissed off during most the adventure, which they don’t want to be on anyway. Don’t to this to your players. Give them a hook that they WANT to go on. Not their characters but the PLAYERS. The game is supposed to be fun and arbitrarily forcing an adventure on the players in a ham-handed way is not fun for the players.

The party wanders around and find two outposts put to the torch with the guards staked out. They are then ambushed by a huge force of humanoids with the Hold Person Shamans. It’s not clear to me why this has to happen. Rather than setting things up and letting the players explore the outcomes (capture, tricking the patrols, etc) it’s just straight in to the railroad. I’ve yet to see a group of players react positively to having their character choice neutered in this way. If it was me I’d make it my personal quest to now fuck this game over, or perhaps just check out mentally. If you have no respect for me as a player then I have no respect for your game. If what I do doesn’t matter then how about we roll a d6. 1-5 I win and on a 6 I reroll. Then we can go get some beer and watch a movie. Sound good to you? Sounds better to me than where this game is going …

After being degraded and humiliated during a three day journey (Ug!) the party gets knocked out by a mist in their cells! I literally did this in stories I write when i was ten years old in fourth grade. Seriously, the guys in my story were getting knocked out by mists all the time and waking up somewhere else, just like in this adventure. This is not a sign of strong storytelling OR sandbox adventure design. Ok, Slavelords time: the party has no gear and is now escaping the dungeon. They are literally in loincloths and facing monsters like Minotaurs and bands of goblins firing arrows at them. Because having all your shit taken away is great fun for the players, especially when its done in a completely arbitrary way. Why not just say ‘Poof! all your stuff disappears!’ It’s the same thing! The dungeon is completely linear. It even has kayaks lined up on the shore of an underground river. WTF?! It, and the prison level above, are just room after room of bland descriptions with monsters who leap to attack. At the end you learn it was all a test of the ogre lord who wants to recruit the players! Accept and werewolf assassins get sent after you. decline and fight the guards. Joy.

I’m sorry, I can’t go on. It’s too painful. The last section has some mass combats of increasing size. These have at least the possibility of more freeform play with roleplaying mixed in, both with the humanoid armies and the commanders of the human troops. No new monsters to speak of. The mundane treasure consists of boring lists of coins and gems (“5 gems @100gp each, 17,130 ep, etc.) A good deal of the magic items are just plain jane book items but a few are more interesting. A good example is Dissolver, a sword that drips acid, or Skullsplitter, the huge spiked mace of quaking. These are great example of more personalized magic items. They could use a little more descriptive text, but the names and effects are at least fun. Players always seem to like getting a sword named Dissolver with green glowing runes down it that drips acid then they do a +2 longsword that does +1d4 acid damage.

If you are interested in large scale battles then the Castles & Crusades I-series/Vakhund does the whole Sandboxy thing a lot better.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/86544/A3-Hunt-for-the-Ogre-Lord?affiliate_id=1892600

by Roderic Waibel
for Sacrosanct Games
OSRIC/Altus Adventum
Levels 3-5

You have stumbled upon an ancient map to a lost island. The script is like non you’ve ever seen, but hand written on the map is the word, “gold”.

Did you like Isle of Dread? Because this adventure is a rehash of the Isle of Dread. There’s a treasure map. It leads to a lost island. There are cannibals and dinosaurs on the island. There’s a lost city/temple on the island with a dungeon underneath. I’m pretty sure that’s the Isle of Dread module. Only there’s not as much to this and it’s not nearly as good.

The hook here is simple: the party finds a treasure map. I usually like that kind of hook. It’s simple. It appeals to both greed and adventure. It’s something that appeals to the players rather than to whatever BS motivations they give their characters. The hook is clouded by two issues. First, that’s how Isle of Dread starts. Second, you have to make history and intellect checks to decipher the map. “Players: We missed our checks.” “DM: Then I guess yo udon’t get to go on the adventure, do you?” Ok, you can take the map to a historian. For the purposes of not comparing this to my much loathed magical 2E Great Society I’m going to replace that word with “Sage”, which makes me loads happier. No, I am not being a nit-picky jerk. If I had any kind of imagination or time, required to improve this, then I’d just create an adventure myself. I assume you’re in the same position position.

There’s then a four page description of every major port in the region along with how much is costs to buy/charter ships of various types (a Dinghy can not carry livestock) as well as weather and the obligatory Pirate/Mermaid/Kraken encounters at sea. I’m not sure why the port city and kingdom descriptions exist. Maybe because they were in Isle of Dread? It doesn’t really add anything to the adventure. I can understand including some basic sailing/boat rules. While I’m not familiar with Altus Adventum I can imagine that it does not include sea travel and these rules expand on it. Besides, I’m kind of partial to wilderness adventures spelling out for me how many hexes/miles a day the party can travel … and the associated frequency of wandering monster rolls. Maybe that’s a clue that I need a new DM screen. The wandering table is kind of pathetic. Four entires for weather and three for creatures, none of which are particularly interesting. Maybe the Kraken could be given a top-hat, mustache, and monocle? Anyway, I’m looking for interesting, whimsical and fantastic things and those are not present.

Quick, to the Isle of Dre^h^h^hFire! The cannibals, pretending to be friendly, greet the party and invite them to a great feast. If the party are jerks they get drugged, captured and eaten. Hopefully though they agree to solve the problem of the villages food shortage. Drugging the parties food is a classic, just like kidnapping their wife or burning down their village. IE: an overused classic. If you’re going to use it in an adventure it needs punched up a little, or a lot. Wandering around on the island lets the DM roll on the wandering table full of desert creatures and vermin. While boring I am at least happy to see that there are not humanoid monsters on it other than men. I loathe the watering down of monsters by including humanoids willy nilly.

There are two place the party can go: the volcano mountain or follow the map to the lost city. The volcano has a demon in it that is poisoning the villages fishing. The volcano has seven rooms in a linear format with maps that look A LOT like a certain level in … Isle of Dread. There are hints of better things in the volcano. A wand hidden in some charred bones in a lava room. A room covered in scalding water or full of insects. Those of hints of good encounters but they generally fail to live up to what I’d like. The mechanics are clunky (will check or flee the insects, ID magic check to learn the command word. WTF?!) and the descriptions uninspired. The demon is the only creature encounter.

The Lost City has a pyramid with fourteen rooms and a dungeon with about ten more. The layouts are not very interesting. The pyramid level seems to have corridors that twist for no apparent purpose. I’m not quite sure that’s a bad thing, in and of itself, but it doesn’t seem right to me. Spiraling a corridor to get to a room, with nothing in the corridor, just seems like being … obtuse? I don’t need for things to make sense in a module but the map layout just seems like filler, and not in a good way. The upper level has snakes & undead while the lower level has lizardmen and the treasure. WTF?! Yeah, there’s a throw-off explanation of a sea cave exit but man, really? I suspect there was a desire to add variety but this wasn’t the way. Maybe if the lizardmen did something other than immediately attack, or there were signs of the lizardmen caught in traps, fighting the undead, or even the undead wanting to protect their tombs. That could have all worked. Instead its just a feeble attempt to add something other than rats and undead to a tomb crawl. Un. Cool.

The actual encounters sometimes try to make an effort but they generally fall short. For example, there’s a room with some murals on the wall and a bowl. If you don’t drop some of your blood in the bowl then demons from the mural drop down to attack. There’s almost certainly no way for the party to figure this out. A significant opportunity lost. There’s also at least one example of a magical economy being present: priests and visitors were routinely given potions of poison immunity. I loathe any attempt to explain away things, especially in this Rube Goldberg fashion. The toilets have paralyzed black puddings in the bottom to dispose of waste! Ug! No, that specific example isn’t present, but the poison immunity potions are pretty damn close. The only other encounter that stands out is a group of liquid filled bowls that the party can play with. I love that sort of thing; it’s always fun to watch the party struggle with the decisions and effects. The bowls are here but the writing surrounding them is a bit uninspired and bland. Past the undead on the first level and the lizardmen on the second will dump the party in to the treasure chamber. There they have a puzzle to figure out and they get their gold. Sorry, that should be “gold.” Corn pores out of holes. It’s a granary. I suspect that screw-job is not going to be met with politeness from the players. Too many of the encounters, in fact nearly all, are just straight up combats. That’s not interesting and the un-interesting is seldom fun. Having an undead & lizardman faction could have been fun, or more stuff to play with or figure out could have been fun, or perhaps some more environmental tricks & traps?

There are no new monsters with strange and interesting effects. That’s too bad, an island like this could have introduced some weird stuff. I like new monsters with new effects because it seriously freaks the players out. The new demon has no special abilities and the giant gila monster just has a poisonous bite … not too much of interest there. There are a half-dozen or so new magic items. These are not the most evocative in description but they do have non-standard effects. I like that sort of personalization of magic items since I think the players enjoy it more. I just wish more of the magic items in this adventure took advantage of it. The mundane treasure is pretty boring: generic coin & jewels.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/86143/A2-Lost-Treasure-of-Actzimotal?affiliate_id=1892600

by Roderic Waibel
for Sacrosanct Games
OSRIC/Altus Adventum
1st Level Characters

Much needed caravans between Piarth and Groveton have suddenly been the target of vicious goblin raiders. Heroes are desperately needed in this borderland community. Can you be those heroes, or are you content to remain in obscurity?

This thing is a mess. It’s a very basic adventure on a subject that has been done to death. Despite this it does bring a few interesting things to the table that others, many many others, could learn from. I should note that this adventure is actually a double: it has a complete OSRIC adventure and then a complete Altus Adventum adventure right behind it, both being the same just re-statted.

Let’s start with the hook. The players are down and out and need cash and see the local merchants guild advertising for someone to find the headquarters of a group of goblins that are raiding their very important caravans … which has been going on for a year. There are sixteen ways to Sunday to pick this apart, but lets go META instead: it doesn’t inspire the players. Most adventure hooks seemed aimed directly at the characters. Their desire to do good, greed, save the world, etc. I believe the nest hooks are aimed at the players instead. They get the people around the table interested in what’s going on and excited about pursuing whatever is going on. Any player can force himself to say “yeah, that’s tonight adventure, ok, lets go on it” but it is the rare hook tat captures the players imagination and makes THEM want to take their character on the adventure. Goblin caravan raiders, as presented here, don’t make the cut.

There’s a strange plot associated with the adventure. One column describes six of seven things that should happen to the adventurers. They get hired. They look in to an outpost tower. They get some goblin ambushes. They meet another group of mercenaries that have been killed. They find the hideout. They report back only to be tricked by a third group. Someone hires them to deliver a message and in return they will rat out the third group. The guy receiving the message hires the players to go kill the goblins?! All of that is detailed in one column and is then never mentioned again?!?Well, almost never … The outpost tower is detailed, and there’s a couple of sentences about the scene of the SECOND group of slaughtered mercenaries (I think), but that’s it. So, yeah, it’s a complete mess. It’s also a WONDERFUL way to run an adventure. The party is first given a pretty minor goal: find out where the bandit lair is. There are at least two other groups of people with the same mission. The party later find one group slaughtered which is a GREAT bit of build-up for the villains. There is now something tangible that the bandits are evil jerkfaces. This should create a decent amount of tension in the party, much more so than if they just ran in to a group of generic guys named “bandits” in the MM and hacked them. But wait! Treachery is afoot as the third party steals information from our murder-hobos and gains the reward! I LOVE it when the party encounters other adventuring/mercenary bands; I think it gives the world a real living flavor and offers more opportunity for interaction. Then there’s subterfuge and coercion with a hooded figure who wants a message delivered, and then finally the assault on the bandit/goblin lair. This little arc is an excellent build-up to main adventure, raiding the goblin lair, but allows for so much more in depth play. It’s a plot, and I hate plots, but it’s also a very good example of how a DM can run a simple adventure and get his players much more involved with it. Yeah, it could be organized better, but then again so could this review. The fundamental outline of the adventure is solid though … much more so than in most of the modules I see. It could have been presented in a less linear/plot-oriented way but the core concept is solid.

Back to the mess. The outpost tower has a coupe of undead in it and a (secret?) basement with a human sacrifice table on it. Wonder why the guards didn’t notice it before? Then there’s the lair of the goblins. Not really much going on there. It’s full of goblins, a wolf or two, some vermin, and a couple of prisoners. The map is ok, with couple of loops, but not really that interesting. There’s no order of battle so the DM is going to have to do some work on which goblins respond if there’s a general melee, and how they will use those loops to conduct hit & run raids on the party. The various encounter rooms don’t really have much going on beyond the goblins in them. Uh … you have to make a will check near the latrines or get nauseous; that’s pretty much the extent of strange and weird things in the lair. No bottles or levers or fountains or statues or murals to play with. There are a couple of interesting magic items: a spike of warmth and an axe named Elfsplitter, with the rest being just generic magic items, and even those two items not having much personalization beyond what I just typed. The mundane treasure is just as bad … despite raiding caravans most of their wealth is in coin. I like a lot personalization in magical and mundane treasures because I think it adds a lot to how the players react to it, and I’m an unimaginative lout. Sadly, it’s just not here.

It’s pretty clear that english is not the designers native language. This thing is rife with spelling and grammar issues, and not the “I’m lazy ass American” kind that I’m known for. And it doesn’t really matter; you have to have some pretty serious issues for me to take notice and mention it; generally of the kind that the editor or layout guy screwed up. The overall organization is more than a little messy also, which is a more serious issue. There are plot points that seem like they should be expanded upon but are then not, and references to things that should have happened but have not. For, the party finds bodies strung in trees, the victims of the raiders. The boxed text indicates that these are the people that screwed the party over before. But wait … did that happen? And didn’t the introduction indicate that it was the FIRST group that got strung up and the SECOND that screwed the party over? I can forgive a lot in this area if the content is there, such as in the early Judges Guild and TSR stuff. Sadly, this is mostly lacking in excellent content.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/86397/A1-Lair-of-the-Goblin-King?affiliate_id=1892600