Gone Fishin’

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Bryce Lynch


by Atherton
for Beer & Barbarians
OD&D/1E
3rd level characters?

This is a free adventure. I don’t usually review free adventures. My logic is that since you can download them and check them out yourself you don’t need input from someone else before you drop some cash on it. Of course this totally ignores the fact that there’s a lot of crap out there and you’ll spend a long time looking over the multitude of free adventures before you find a decent one. Thus this little experiment. Let’s hope it works out so I don’t have to resort to reviewing 4E stuff when I run out of OSR.

Let’s get this out of the way: This is a wonderful ADVENTURE. <—— See that word over there? You probably think you know what it means. You probably don’t know what it means. I’m not even sure I know what it means, but just like good porn: I know it when I see it. This is an adventure Charlie, one of the few I have ever seen. The players are going to go on a journey, meet lots of very interesting people, and almost certainly kill a few folk. Sounds like a lot of other little-a adventures doesn’t it? Except this one is charming, magical, fun, whimsical, and everything a real D&D ADVENTURE should be.

The hook is wonderfully simple, as all good hooks should be. An old man appears at the royal court and tells the king a story about a giant pike that appeared one day in the river next to a local village. It asks a local bravo what is best in life, the bravo mumbles a response, and the fish eats him in one gulp! The King, desirous of a new trophy, offers a massive reward for the fish. The local nobles and hangers-on flock to the promise of reward and status and, joined by fortune seekers from all walks of life. Joy! Greed! Status! Adventure! All of the characters motivations are covered, even being a hero! And none of that pesky ‘save the world’ garbage that shows up too often in published adventures. There’s something in that hook to appeal to every type of character motivation. Be it by accident or on purpose, it’s a great hook and sets the stage for what’s to follow. A magical little adventure chasing after a giant fish surrounded by idiot nobles. Whimsy and moronic villagers; two of my favorite things!

The ADVENTURE takes the form of a mostly linear wilderness journey. There are several encounter areas that the river is going to pass through which will be augmented by random encounter tables. “Oh no! Linear!” you’re thinking. As if. First, it’s wilderness so it’s possible to skip most of the encounters through creative play, something that is much tougher in a linear dungeon. Second, there is no plot involved. Yeah, there’s a giant fish at the end but that doesn’t mean you have to first have six other encounters to learn his weakness, retrieve the seven sacred rings of Vendusela, etc. There’s a significant difference between the party seeing an old mill and deciding to investigate and the doors of a two-exit dungeon room slamming shut until you solve the bullshit riddle/slay the bullshit monster in the room.

Let’s talk encounters. The encounters here are filled with a wonderful assortment of local color and whimsy and this it what primarily turns a normal adventure in to an ADVENTURE. The local town, once a sleepy place, is overrun with pushy arrogant, mostly incompetent nobles and fortune hunters . This is GREAT. It sets the scene for all sorts of chaos, from price gouging to pushy idiots. I imagine Deadwood, from the Tv series, with a lot more vainly dressed killers in it. There’s an excellent set of random encounter tables for the town: jeering local youths, a stinky dog trailing the players and barking incessantly, idiotic but kind nobles, pickpockets, Alignment Stupid fops, and of course no town adventure is complete without a chamber pot being emptied. These random encounter descriptions are short but full of flavor. Chaos! wonderful wonderful Chaos! But in a good way. 🙂

The players will no doubt travel overland in search of the giant pike, which means … another random table! A mob of hardened-faced housewives in search of their husbands … Wait, I’m going to ruin a good part for you. Random 1 is a group of hobbit musician pickpockets. Random 2 is a group of drunk dwarves looking for a group of hobbit musicians they claims robbed them blind. Random 3 is a group of drunk farmers looking for a group of dwarves they claim hijacked their beer wagon. Random 4 is the aforementioned housewives in search of their drunk husbands. Random 5 is a group of pigs, ducks, kids, dogs, cats, in pursuit of the housewives. My loutish attempts at describing the encounters don’t do them justice. The designer has done a great job of providing a wonderful set of random encounters full of color.

The fixed encounters are great also. An old Mill. An enchanted forest. A lodge of talking beavers in a shoving match with knights. Arrogant elves, large groups of fairies (Nixies, pixies, brownies, leprechauns.) Ancient shrines with satyrs and water weirds … The adventure has some strong fairy tale qualities to it but never becomes silly. It’s full of encounters the party are going to find memorable and fun. And at the end of the adventure is a giant fish for the party to handle somehow … with a fairy tale ending. Not a DIsney ending and not full on Brothers Grim, but somewhere in between. Hmmm, maybe folk tale is better than fairy tale as a description.

The few magic items could use a little more personalization so they aren’t just “+2 broadsword” and the treasure mostly consists of pearls and perhaps a sack or two of gold. These are the only places the ADVENTURE falls down. Go grab this one and take a look; it’s what a real D&D ADVENTURE should look like.

http://www.pfoorumi.net/beernbarbarians/

Posted in Level 3, Reviews, The Best | 11 Comments

Dark Outpost

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by James M. Ward
for Eldritch Enterprises
for “practically any SF system”
Moderate experience levels

An up-front warning to help mitigate what’s to follow: My one true love is science fiction and I love Gamma World above all other RPG’s. Despite this, I think SF is a damn hard genre to run. The players have access to information and technology that can overcome nearly any obstacle and week after week of ‘Space Dungeons in the Sky’ just does’t make sense. I have the highest regard for anyone who can run a successful SF game for more than few weeks.

Dark Outpost follows a pretty basic hook: a newly built space station has gone offline and is not answering hails. The party is sent in to find out what’s going on. In the best traditions of Jim Ward, they are probably going to get themselves killed and that’s probably going to be because they forgot their mission. Their job is to investigate and bring back information so someone ELSE can solve the problem. This shouldn’t be too difficult but characters being controlled players mens that the body count is likely to be high. One of Wards oft quoted saying is that he doesn’t kill players, they do it to themselves. After seeing this module I couldn’t agree more: he sets up situations and the players pick the apple and dig in.

The space station is divided in to nine sections each with it’s own purpose and getting its own section of descriptions in the book. This is then supplemented by a description of the spaceship from the PREVIOUS mission, which is docked at the station also. After a brief station overview each section has a more detailed map of that portion of the station followed by a description of what goes on in that sector and then a couple of encounters in that section. The feel is something like a hybrid, mixing elements of a setting with encounters. Hmmm, maybe something like a city book could be: here’s this section of the city and whats going on there and here are a couple of encounter you can have in that area. The entire place is really more of an open exploration environment where the players can wander about and get in to trouble while investigating and, oh yeah, hare are a couple of examples of things that can happen.

That description really doesn’t give enough credit to the encounters though. They tend to be fully fleshed out little mini-settings. While reading it over I did get a little … uneasy? about them: the vast majority involve either a bot or fungus creatures. I suppose this can’t be avoided; it is, after all, an derelict space station. Perhaps a little more variety could have been included by including a couple of sub-plots: survivors, bug infestation, crazed programmer ala Jurassic Park, etc. While it’s a two trick pony it’s also a VERY good two trick pony. Each creature feels different and unique. I believe this is critically important to a game; the players have to be kept on their toes by encountering creatures with new & different abilities. A Gelatinous Cube or Mimic is only new once. This keeps the players guessing, and afraid. This adventure does a much better job than other in presenting encounters which feel new and different, even if they rehash some old territory. Murderous doc-bots, crazy AI, security bots, etc, while the tropes are all there the designer does a good job of making them fresh and new again. A packing crate robot that appears time and time again is a good example. The players no doubt expect an attack in the loading dock, but the crate robot (as in a robot made out of packing crates) should be bizarre enough to make them take notice, and the fact that it comes back time and time again adds in a nice recurring villain element, with all the dread and anticipation that entails.

The module falls down in two areas. First is the portion of the station devoted to training colonists. The encounters here feel a little , I don’t know, forced maybe? Trucks, ultralights, ‘shoot the bad guy’ security training, and the like. Following behind this is the robo-olympics section. These sections don’t really feel the same as the rest of the module. It cold be that I’m remembering the bits in Barrier Peaks and an ingrained hatred of training areas gained from bad D&D modules, but I don’t think so. The feel is just off there and the encounters feel forced. Second is the lack of a boss, or solution. There is no great moment when the players will figure out what is going on, no climax or the like. Because of this the exploration feels a bit empty. The players will SEE what is going on almost immediately but they will never figure out much more. Oh, they collect additional details but there is no great mystery here to be solved or secrets to be discovered. I’m left with conflicted feelings. It feels like an empty adventure, but then again it’s also open-ended the way, I suspect, a good SF adventure should be. Not ever adventure needs a climax written in to it, or a solution to what’s going on. Again: the mission is to find out what’s up and report back.

In any event, it’s a good module and I’ll be keeping it.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/100916/Dark-Outpost?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | Leave a comment

Lich Dungeon Level One

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Frank Mentzer
for Eldritch Enterprises
Generic Fantasy System
Minimally experiences characters

This is the first level of a megadungeon whose origins go back to the very early days of the game. It seems that a certain lich bought himself a dungeon … or rather, he caused a dungeon to be constructed, filled it full of stuff, and now sits back and watches as groups of murder-hobos make their way in to its depths. This being level one we don’t really know what lies in those depths yet … well, other than a lich presumably.

The book has a small section about the portion of the entrance to the dungeon which I really appreciated. Every good megadungeon needs a good entrance. Recall The Watcher in the Water/mellon, or Stonehells great foyer with its gaping maw. This time it’s a pair of pesky trees, shown on the cover, that guard and control access to the Lich Dungeon. Another great touch is the wandering monster tables for this area, except ‘wandering monster’ doesn’t quite describe things well. Oh, yes, there are some real wandering monsters of wildly divergent difficult levels however the real joy comes in the various organized bands of creatures. The party can meet another group murder hobos going to or coming from the dungeon. They can meet raiders picking over the bodies of a group they’ve recently killed, or perhaps encounter bandits aiming for the parties heads! I LOVE this kind of stuff. Not only does it make getting in to and out of the dungeon much more fun but it also provides bits of continuity for the game world. People you see one day show the next dead, or ambushing you. This helps contribute greatly that the place is a living breathing environment and that there are things going on outside of what the party is involved in.

Level One of the dungeon is a nice little bit of REAL old school. The place is crawling with the kind of stuff that shows up in home games all the time, and elements from the early days of the hobby. The Spanish Inquisition shows up not one but twice, complete with outfits and outrageous quotes. There are rooms and places designed to test the characters and the monsters that live on the level with number puzzle problems to confound the players. OMG I HATE these things! But the designer puts them in to be as minimally intrusive as possible, turning them from drudgery in to a nice little bonus reward for players and groups who want to try their hand. While these sorts of elements are nice they don’t really make up the heart of the bulk of the dungeon. Instead we get things like acid jello cubes that, when destroyed, collapse in a wave of acidic protoplasm all over the players shoes/feet as well as all over the bit of treasure behind it. THAT’s what I want in my dungeon! A weird and strange monster with a goofy death effect that impacts another element of the dungeon, forcing the players to think and act carefully. The dungeon is full of this sort of stuff. Most of the various encounter areas have something special going on with them: a bit of roleplaying, a nifty effect, or something similar. The dungeon does skew a bit more to the silly side than most products, but never really travels too far down the path of a jokey dungeon. The Spanish Inquisition is probably the example that falls the closest to jokey territory, and even it is toned down from the sketch.

The map is genuinely old school. Based on a single sheet of graph paper the dungeon fills every bit of it. Twisty turney corridors, secret doors, pools, weak floors, pits, the map is full of things for the players to get in to trouble with. The map is broken down in to sections and each map appears at the start of its rooms descriptions in the booklet. This type of format is also seen in Stonehell which used it to great effect. Most of the wandering monster table is not going to very interesting, orcs, rate, and the like. There are entries for groups of adventurers as well as dungeon maintenance crews of various type. A feature I did like is that the creatures have a ‘direction’ associated with them. The orcs come from a certain direction, representing where that groups barracks are. Sometimes I see this in modules in a slightly different format. AKA: reduce the number of monster X found in room Y by all of the losses suffered in this encounter. Again, I like this because it gives a bit of continuity to the dungeon. The orcs are coming from their barracks. My only problem with the map is probably just a personal preference: symmetry. Various portions of the map are repeated in different positions in the dungeon as mirror images of themselves. I LOATHE this. I think it’s boring and completely uninteresting.

This brings up the issues with the module. The primary one is the repeating patterns to be found. Four fountains, four mints, four loot-for-brains, meetings rooms, barracks, etc. The dungeon level has A LOT of repetition in it. This again may be personal preference but I don’t like seeing this sort of thing. It’s probably past trauma associated with symmetrical temples with earth/air/fire/water sanctuaries. In any event, there are only 65 or so encounter areas in the dungeon and a decent number of them repeat. This is exacerbated by the … verbosity? of the various entries. There is a lot of repetition. We’re reminded continually about the special effects related to the coinage of the dungeon, or of how the mints work, or that there is a loot puzzle nearby, or …. you get the picture. The monster stats also appear both in the text and in the appendix. This isn’t usually a problem however the generic stat system takes up a lot of page real estate, about a third of a column each. In possibly the worst possible example of this the outdoor wandering monsters table for the dungeon entrance takes up twelve pages as each monster is detailed both with its reactions/motivations (Yeah! I love this) and its stats (boo! repeat! boo!) There is a section that details WHY the author choose to things this way, to minimize page flipping, but combined with the generic stat system and the large font it gets a bit excessive. The 84 pages of the module detail only 65 encounters plus the entrance … not exactly the degree of terseness that I prefer.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/100920/Lich-Dungeon–Level-One?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 1, No Regerts, Reviews | Leave a comment

The House on the Hill

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Craig J. Brain
for WardCo
Metamorphosis Alpha

Oh post-apoc, how I love thee!

Here’s something never ever ever seen before: a supplement for Metamorphosis Alpha. To my knowledge this is the ONLY supplement ever produced for that mighty game. With a title inspired by the Robison poem, I presume, and the cover having a Something Wicked vibe, this supplement deals with that most common of thing: an RHMDU. The Round House Modular Dwelling Unit is just a basic house, with a simple and uniform floorplan. It’s generally the target of looting, vandalism, or a lair. It’s gets old fast. This supplement spruces them up both with an adventure, several new seeds, and a bunch of tables that can be used to generate some houses as the basis for adventure.

First up is the adventure. It is … good? I guess I don’t know how to categorize it. It takes a common element in Metamorphosis Alpha, the RHMDU, and combines it with a relatively common situation. There’s nothing much super extra special about the adventure. Uh … other than it being the only one every published in the history of the game. It is however a VERY solid adventure that covers all the bases and should be a memorable evening for a group of players.

Essentially, the players stumble upon a RHMDU in good repair with a manicured lawn and a mailbox out front. At this point two things are going to happen. First every player with an inkling of common sense is going to know that the robots are still running and present. Second, each one of those of players is going to start drooling over the ancient tech sure to be in the house. The adventure has nicely covered two critical components: hook and foreshadowing. No ‘being sent on a mission’ or ‘end of the world’ nonsense here, just a pure appeal to the base greed of every player character ever generated. Perfect! Second it covers some foreshadowing, or build up, of the villains. Some build up and anticipation is a great part of an adventure. You want your players saying ‘Oh shit oh shit oh shit, robots!’ or ‘I know hers here man, keep an eye for him. I LOOK BEHIND THE DOOR!’ or maybe even ‘uh … he that guy seems serious. he keeps leaving impaled bodies with our names on them …’. This introduction leads to anticipation and fills the players with a whole new load of emotions to work against and have fun with during play.

Yes, the house is still operational. The party has to deal with a host of robots still serving their old master. This hits another important aspect of gameplay: options other than combat. The players can just the bash the robots to death, and probably loose several of their fellow members, or they can reason and roleplay with the robots. Option two is FAR more fun, as the party squirm to balance their greed with their fear the robots and keeping in their good graces. Besides, you know they are going to end up in combat anyway, they’re player characters after all! You can always count on them to get in to whatever trouble is laid out for them to hang themselves with! The adventure is, well, typical for this situation. The players dodge/kill robots, interact with mutated stuff, play with the tech, and then discover the houses secret and try to get out before the reactor overloads, all while loading up their greedy little pockets. Yes, like all good adventures it involves an overloading reactor. Which reminds me, I should run a campaign where the players leave behind a radioactive crater every night/adventure. There’s lots to get in trouble with in the house, tech to loot, and funny robots to play with. “Would your pet like a treat, Sir?”

The back half of the booklet is new content from Jim Ward. Jim gives you maybe a dozen or so additional adventure seeds. The first two have three or four paragraphs associated with them and the next ten or so have just a paragraph or so of text. And oh what seeds they are. The players spy a robot with it’s arms overflowing with ancient tech weapons rolling towards an RHMDU. The players must present a scroll inside as a rite of passage; it asks for Luj Zooprimo Pee Za. X-Tra Chiz. No En Choviz.” Solid GOLD! The final section is a selection of 35 random tables that can help a GM generate a RHMDU ready for exploration. These tables work together to generate the building condition, occupants, artifacts, power devices, wall decorations, and much more, as well as conditions for everything! This thing just BEGS to be a programmed utility on some website. With the output you should have a complete complete house ready to explore, and almost certainly a complete adventure seed ready also, if you have any modicum of imagination.

Best of all, you should be able to use this booklet easily with Gamma World, Morrow Project, or any other post-apoc sci-fi setting.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/83322/Metamorphosis-Alpha-The-House-On-The-Hill?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 1 Comment

Tomb of the Iron God

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

This is a near perfect example of an old school adventure module.

Villagers report that there was recently a truly massive lightning storm that centered on the nearby Monastery of the Iron God. There have been no sign of the kindly monks since then, but rumors of the recent wealth of these monks are well traveled …

Before I get in to this adventure, which is totally awesome, I would like to once again offer a few words of advice. If you happen to find yourself in a fantasy world in which The Gods are obviously real (grant you spells, show up frequently in visions and a bit less so in person, etc) then it’s probably not a good idea to join a religious order and then piss off the patron god. If you DO want to do that then at least join a different gods cult first, preferably a diametrically opposed one, so you get a bit of protection from the wrath of the first god. You can still expect some fallout, but at least you’ll have some protection. The moronic monks in this monastery did not follow that advice.

The background section is short: a goodly order of monks, charged with interring the dead, have reinterpreted their vows and now keep tribute. Their god, The Iron God, who lives in their monastery along with his nemesis, punished them. Hard. This is detailed briefly in a couple of paragraphs along with the player hook “rumors of wealth!” in just a half page or so. A very nice rumors tables takes up another small section and then the adventure keys start. This is the way I like things; just enough detail and background to get things launched and then leaving the rest up to the DM. I don’t need a three page epic backstory, I need just enough information to refresh me memory and get my whimsy juices flowing.

The monastery has two levels with about 60 keyed rooms. The maps of the two levels are pretty well designed. There are lots of alternative routes, loops, and other ways for a party to get from point A to point B. I love these sorts of maps. They lend a real sense of exploration and discovery to an adventure. Monsters can show up behind a party, ambush, or be ambushed. In fact, one of the room encounters with goblins note that they will use this very tactic! The maps also detail lots of statues, pools, secret doors, pits, and other associated features. Just what I’m looking for! The wandering monsters are nothing too special: undead, goblins, and vermin. Each type IS given a maximum number. Once the party has killed 50 giant centipedes then there will be no more appearing, and so on. Stats are included, which I appreciate. A real opportunity was missed with the goblins though.

Yes, there’s goblins. I generally don’t like humanoid monsters in my adventurers. They are mostly a substitute for “evil human bandits” and rarely have anything interesting going on. I generally prefer, and substitute, brigands and reserve ‘Monster’ statues for the truly bizarre stuff. I think the real monsters have much more impact that way, it allows for more role-play, and can give the players second thoughts: all humans look alike, are they 0-level or more experienced? I’m not saying that humanoids can never be used well, but they are so rarely that it makes more sense just to substitute some bandits, with the same stats. In this instance the goblins are mostly just window dressing and something to get hacked on. There are two exceptions to this though that reveal more of what could have been done with them. First, the shaman has left a shrunken head in the entryway with a magic mouth on it. That’s nice. It starts bleeding over in to the goblins being a real race with different values and culture. They are still gonna get hacked down in that case, but at least the flavor text is nice and we get a better sense of the weird and alien. Second, one room have a group of goblins playing a game of poking a captured cat with sharpened bones. This sort of snapshot of Real Life taking place in the dungeon is something I like to see. it gives the sense that life is  taking place outside the actions of the party. Sadly, this room is the only real example of that. The wandering goblins, and the few fixed encounters with them, would have been a wonderful opportunity to display more of this.

The module dungeon has several other nice features. There are statues and fountains to play with and explore. Most of these do strange things. Who wants a +1 in combat for the next day! Oh, or you might die. Go ahead guys, push the big red shiny shiny button …   I love seeing that sort of thing in modules. There is also something akin to factions, or at least allies, in the dungeon. More than one room has some potential allies the party can take advantage of if they keep heads on straight. There’s also a lot of inscriptions on walls, bizarre statues who’s faces change, and spooky crypts to explore. Oh, and two gods. Yes Virginia, this 1st level module has two gods in it. It also has probably over 500 monsters in it. Yes, you read that right. And a decent number of the rooms are empty. Group that charge in expecting to win every fight are going to be TPK’d in short order. Gotta know when to hold em and know when to fold em folks. There’s a lot of good treasure, not just in coin but in rugs, tapestries, candlesticks, etc. Most of the magic items are rather normal ones and I would have preferred to see those items personalized; +1 shield is boring.

The module ends with some advice on how to run an old school dungeon and advice on restocking the dungeon; who moves in when the players retreat to rest in town. These are both good sections, especially the one on how to play old school style. It’s good primer on the Imagination The Hell Out  Of It attitude that I enjoy so much.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/252257/0e-Tomb-of-the-Iron-God-Swords–Wizardry?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 16 Comments

Snakeriders of the Aradondo

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Tim Kask
for Eldritch Enterprises
Generic fantasy system
for moderate experience characters

This module isn’t very good.

The module has roughly 14 pages of lead in, ten or so pages of ‘Wilderness Adventure’ and another ten or so that details the snake temple including its encounters and maps. For all of that there is very little adventure present. There’s lots of background, ecology, general descriptions and the like, some of which is interesting and nice, but it fails to deliver on adventure, at least by my standards, and probably by most modern expectations.

The lead in consists of an introduction by the designer, a couple of pages describing his game world, a couple describing the adventure hook, and a few more describing the primary … ecology/culture of the region and the ‘main’ enemy. There are some really nice ideas floating around in this section. First, I LOVE designers notes. Too often it’s very hard to get the feel for a product, or game system, by just reading the rules or playing by yourself. I love to play new games at cons chiefly because of this reason. You can get a good feel for the intention and atmosphere of the game when its run by someone who cares very deeply about it, such as the designer or someone close to them. A lot of the designers introduction and background in this module helps contribute to this and I appreciate seeing it.

The hook has both positives and negatives associated with it. The players are sent on a mission by a great wizard to Save the World; that’s the bad part. Yes, I’m aware that hundreds if not thousands of adventures have the players being sent on a mission. That doesn’t make it a good hook. The problem with this is that it assumes the players want to save the world. Are your players heroic? Mine generally are not. Oh, my 11 year-old son is. He identifies strongly with his magic-user Blaze and I’m sure he sees himself as Blaze and wants to be brave and heroic. He goes on adventures because it’s the right thing to do. My 12 year-old daughter doesn’t anymore. She’s moved on to where most of my group players are: gold, fire and torture, to steal a term from the blogoverse. Frankly, these are the groups which have I have the most fun with. A bunch of people sitting around having a good time and sending their characters on an adventure to grab some loot. I recall an OSR con game I ran at WhosyerCon [Let me tell you about my character …] where the players ended up shooting an old farmer in the leg with a crossbow as he ran away form the inn. They proceeded to threaten and torture him to get him to tell them the story about the old temple up on the mountain. THAT was fun. Everyone was laughing and having a great time. Yeah, these guys will go an adventure because “its the right thing to do” but they will also roll their eyes and utter ‘LAME’ under their breaths also. Essentially this hook boils down to “this is the adventure I’m running tonight and you’re going on it”. Yes, to a certain extent that’s always true but it’s always better when the players don’t roll their eyes at you. So, the hook is lame. Except for the end of it. You see the characters are given a giant gas-bag creature that flies/floats and has a gondola underneath that’s piloted by a trained chimp named Louis. Now THAT’S adventure! That is just the kind of moderately silly but totally cool stuff I like to see in an adventure. It’s whimsy, it’s gonzo, and it’s wonderful. I just wish there were more of it since, sadly, that’s the only example present in this product.

The rest of the introduction section is a bit muddled. There’s historical data intermixed with background intermixed with history, creature stats, and so on. I’m not going to complain that a great deal of this information is, these days, generally included at the end of an adventure as an appendix. I’m not tied down to the usual layout formats. My problem is that things are too lengthy and too mixed together. The way it’s presented is confusing, with bits of data from the various parts mixed in and around the various sections. I found most of the information about the game world and the background to be unnecessary and/or overly wordy. There’s a great deal of background but I didn’t find that it provided much in the way of actionable or interesting information. I’m sure others will be interested in the details of Kasks world for historical or anecdotal reasons. I’m not. I want to run an adventure. [Ok, so, I’m interested also. But not in the required reading portions of my adventurers.] The core of the enemy is found here also: there are these jungle fey and they now ride these giant snakes. That’s pretty cool. Unfortunately the fey come off more like jungle kobolds, complete with blowguns and atlatl, rather than fey

The giant airship drops the party off at a beach on the target island and they must now go inland to find the fey, discover the secret, and save the world. [There’s another one of those triple moon alignments coming up, you know, the ones that happen every 200 years? Next time your party should schedule extra-planer vacations every alignment, eclipse, etc.] Up the river or along the trail the party goes. The alignment happens soon, within a few days, so they better get moving. How long will it take? Well, that’s a mystery. You see, while there’s a simple hex map provided it’s actually more of a diagram because there’s no scale or distance noted on it. Or in the text. Clearly the party is meant to travel from the beach to the temple and fight various flora and fauna along the way. This section details several new plants and animals that the party can encounter. But there’s no way to tell how big the hexes are or how far away the tempe is. This is compounded by a lack of encounter charts. There’s no wandering monster checks, no encounters on the wilderness map, nothing. Just a description of several flora and fauna the party may encounter. Look, I get it. I’m a decent DM and I know I need to fill in details. I can decide how long it takes the party to get there and I can thrown some of the monsters at them and I can create some interesting encounters, like a fey village, a broken bridge crossing etc. You know what else I can do? Not buy this product. This really begs the question of how much content and of what type a product should include, and what the purpose of a module is. As is, this is more of a setting or backdrop rather than an adventure. There are some parts here that are good. I ALWAYS love new monsters, especially those that have new/different abilities. Giant puffballs and carnivorous plants plants fit in perfectly. These are supplemented by crocs and carnivorous apes; not the most original but they fit in well with the adventure. There’s also a table that I ADORE. It’s small, just a few entries, and details ‘other giant creatures’ that the party may encounter. Very basic, a name, some AC, HD, etc, and a column for damage. A few have straight up damage: 1d8, 1d10, etc. But the VERY cool ones only have a word. “Drain” or “venom” or “poison.” Yeah baby! That’s the kind of seat of your pants play that I love in old D&D. What does the “Drain” ability of the giant leech do? It’s up to you! I love that. None of that namby pamby codified 4E rules nonsense here. Just a DM and his imagination, kicked started by a one-word entry from the designer.

The final section of the module is the snake temple. It has two levels with about 21 encounter areas on the first level and about a dozen or so on the second. It’s clear that this is the goal, the page heading even states this is the climax of the adventure. The temples two levels are teeming with … nothing. The past is empty. Ok, it’s not empty and I do have a strong tendency towards hyperbole, but it might as well be empty. Let’s see, there’s one of those fey on the second level, he’s about 1HD. Then there’s the room with six carnivorous apes in it. Oh, and the room with the giant spider in it. That’s it. The Snakeriders? There’s ONE, patrolling the lower level. That’s right, ONE. In the entire module there’s ONE. ONE. FUCKING. SNAKERIDER. Look, I’m not making this shit up. It’s possible that I missed something, but I did read the thing through three times. ONE. There’s some small mundane and magical treasures, but mostly the few rooms with stuff says “feel free to put something in this room, a minor magical item. I put a magic wand in it.” Ug! How about I use the random dungeon generator in the back of the DMG? Then I don’t even need to buy this product! [See comments above regarding what a product should include, and expectations.] There’s one puzzle in the temple, involving the quest items and the end of the world thing. Otherwise the rooms are basically empty. What do I mean? Let me quote: “Several large barrels and boxes are scattered about, all empty. This was a seldom-used storage area.” You know get the basic idea of just about every room in the temple. Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit. Just a bit. There’s a room with poison gas in it and a room that smells funny also.

Yeah, I had strong feelings about this one. I try to describe modules so people can make an informed purchasing decision but sometimes my emotions get the better of me. I know what I like, I think I’m pretty clear describing what I like and why and what I don’t like and why. I hope that despite my OBVIOUS dislike that you can come away with enough information to make you own decision. I should point out that I don’t LOATHE it and I’m sure that there’s someone out there who can use this. [My loathing is reserved for the products that I’ve seen from Ronin Arts and Alphonso.]

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/100921/Snakeriders-of-the-Aradondo?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Welcome to Mortiston, USA

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Mark Cookman
for Scrying Eye Games
Multiple Systems
I’m reviewing this out of order, and out of genre, because it’s soooo good. While at Origins I saw a postcard on the tables near registration that was advertising this. It looked neat but I promptly forgot about it. Later when I was wandering the dealer hall I stumbled upon it at a booth I wouldn’t normally visit (bad me! BAD!) that looked to be selling maps. Picking it up to thumb through it I could tell immediately that this book was something special. Further reading confirmed that initial impression. This is one of the best books published recently for ANY rpg. It describes the town of Mortiston during a modern day zombie apocalypse. And it does it in a way that is complete and yet easy to use.

The book is roughly divided in to six sections, roughly, with some commentary and filler scattered throughout. First we have the personalities. There are 19 or 20 core NPC’s described in the book, one per page, with about half the page being three of four paragraphs on their personality and history and the other half being stats for the five systems the book supports, along with some typical equipment. Any good fantasy village revolves around the NPC’s and heir personalities and this book truly gets it. The various descriptions do an excellent job painting a picture of the person and their personality without railroading the GM down a path. You truly get a sense of who these people are and how they would/will react to various situations. In addition the various folks tend to have strong personalities: people they like, people they dislike, preferences, and strong quirks. Some of them skate a very fine line between being over the top but they all break short of that line, in my opinion. In fact, I’d say they fit perfectly next to that line. This is, after all, an RPG in which we’re all trying to have fun to having some strong and non-bland personalities is virtually a requirement. We’re not talking People of Pembrocktonshire levels of strange, but someplace just short of that. You’re going to find criminals of various type, from hugs to masterminds, and heroes from those duty bound to those who morally do the right thing (for various different reasons) to the hangers on and normal people. These are all well developed people with motivations for what they do that make sense. Each one also has a brief section that lets you know where are during the various portions of the outbreak timeline.

The timelines are GREAT! There are two major ones. The first is a detailed timeline, almost minute by minute in some cases, of the first day of the zombie outbreak. This timeline takes place over four pages. There are a few incidents before 11:00am that provide some great atmosphere for the day to come, and then at 11:00am all hell breaks loose. And continues to. At work I’m fond of saying that any idiot can fix one problem. It’s when TWO problems happen simultaneously that things break down. Well, Mortiston has A LOT of problems that first day. We get a full list of major events and what our 20 NPC’s are doing throughout the day: where they go and what they do. At the back of the book is a two page timeline that covers details over the first 111 pages of the outbreak; with a focus on major events and ‘programmed’ deaths. IE: It’s two pages of plot hooks for the characters to play with. For example, the last entry is “Cadet T from the Gaiten Academy is on a mounted patrol and is ambushed by Z’s and breaks his leg. Lacking a trained doctor he dies of internal injuries on day Z+129.” If that’s not a plot hook I don’t know what is! And by this time the party is going to have an emotional attachment to these NPC’s, like Cadet T, and, more importantly, they are going to be in a certain mindset. Too many times an adventure introduces a loved one or NPC only to have them threatened and/or kidnapped as a plot hook for the adventure. This happens so much that some players will never involve themselves with people in order to save themselves the trouble. But in this supplement the characters already know the trouble “Z Day”, and they are going to spend the first 111 days getting to know Cadet T and know that he can take care of himself, can be relied upon to help, and is a force unto himself. The plot putting him danger doesn’t happen right away and because of that the party will have a deeper motivation with regard to him. And that’s just one example from the timelines. I LOVE these things. It’s built in action for the party to interact with while trying to survive the Z’s!

There are 29 developed locations described, each getting one page of text. There’s a paragraph or so on the locations background and history and then three of so paragraphs on the physical description of the location: it’s layout, dimensions, building materials (Z ‘s on the loose, after all) and so on. There’s also a section on resources. This details what kind of goods can be found at the site, both mundane and anything special. This is further supplemented by rough timeline that indicates the degree of looting of the site that takes place. Great! A real sense of time and events passing! Then there are a couple of sections that describe the people present. Who they are, what they are doing, when they are present and when they leave and when they change locations. This is supplemented by a brief chart that shows how the owners/occupiers/etc relate to the other groups in town. This ranges from ‘Foe’ through ‘Cold’ and ‘Neutral’ to ‘Warn’ and ‘Friendly.’ With just a quick glance the GM can help orient the NPC”s towards the party and anyone accompanying them.

Factions my friends! That means factions! It should be clear by now almost all modern interpretations of Zombies use them as a sideline and motivator for other action taking place. In the video game Left for Dead they are the speed bumps that distract you while the special infected attack. In several various movies (28 Days later) Tv shows and comics (Walking Dead, etc) they zombies are basically red herring; the real action is what the characters are forced to do and how they struggle with it internally and between themselves. Factions and NPC’s make the world go round. There are roughly eight factions present in town who all feel differently about each other and are described in a coupe of pages near the back of the book. These range from the former powers (sheriff, mayor, etc) to a motorcycle gang, a group of orphans, organized criminals creating a crime/slave society, roving ‘good’ warriors, a military academy, the guys at the radio station, and the local religious looney. Each one gets a couple of paragraphs describing them, their motivations, their leaders and members, how they feel about others, etc. In addition to all of this we also get plenty of other smaller groups scattered throughout the text. The local native american tribe. The loggers. The ‘historic’ and affluent district. This place is CRAWLING with factions, and therefore plot hooks and NPC interactions … all with a healthy dose of Z’s.

Finally there’s a section in the page, six pages or so, that describe major things for the gamemaster. The state of water, electricity, cells, etc over the timeline. There’s also a set of tables that describe he various sections of town, their flavor, and what kind of stores you can find there, apart from the major locations that get their own full page descriptions. There is a LOT for the GM to work with provided by the section. This place is absolutely insane. I usually don’t give a shit about providing spoilers, but I’m going to hold back this time. There is SO much going on that’s absolutely WONDERFUL and I don’t want to ruin your first read through of that section of the book.

Those of you that follow my blog know that I have some pretty high standards. Well, this booklet is just about perfect. I can’t find any fault with it at all. If you have any interest at all in modern settings, zombies, or post-apoc play then you should pick it up. Even if you don’t you should pick it up; it will inspire you and the authors/publishers deserve to be rewarded for producing such a fine book. It’s a perfect example on how to create a living breathing environment. Strong NPC’s, lots of factions and relationships, and lots of potential plot hooks. It provides a wealth of detail without being burdensome and remaining easy to use.

This is available at DriveThru.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/102906/Welcome-to-Mortiston-USA-An-AllAmerican-Zombie-Apocalypse?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews, The Best | Leave a comment

Forest of Deceit

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Christopher Clark
Generic Fantasy Adventure
Levels 1-3

This is a little sandbox hex crawl in a wild forest on a scale not usually seen. The map is about six square miles with the individual hexes being 250 yards or so. This is quite a small scale but perhaps appropriate for beginning level characters. The frequency of wandering monsters is astounding: once every 100 yards something WILL show up. There’s about a 70% chance of encountering a game animal and a 30% chance of encountering a potentially hostile beasty. These are mostly animals as well, with a few excursions in to fantasy creature territory, such as Unicorns, Lycanthropes, Griffins, and Carnivorous Plants. There’s a distinct lack of humanoid creatures, which I prefer, and a handy dandy chart indicating how much food you can get from a game animal, how good it tastes, and how much its pelt is worth. This is a nice little aspect of play that is usually ignored and. as suggested by the module, provides a fine hook for getting the players involved as hunters/trappers looking to make their fortune.

The map only has about eight actual encounters. Again diverging from typical hex crawl behavior, each encounter generally takes from two to three pages. The encounters tend to be of the ongoing hook type. There’s a patrol on the roads that could give the party trouble if they are unknown, and a couple of trappers at a base camp for the party to interact with. There’s a spy lurking about with a pocket full of intrigues, as well as a group of Sasquatch who act as forest guardians. There are a couple of related cougar encounters, a demon haunted cave, and a dryad at her tree. Few if any of these encounters are straight up hacks. They can all potentially involve creative problem solving and social play by the characters in order to resolve the situations. My favorite is probably the Cave of Delights since it’s the most strange and fantasy-like, involving a she-demon frozen in rock and looking for release. The rest of the encounters tend toward the mundane and usual. Just how interesting can a cougar attack be? Enough to take up 2.5 pages of a module? Well … no. There’s a lot of … oh, let’s call it padding. Read aloud text, long stat blocks, and descriptions of things that don’t need descriptions. Clark is a good writer and his text is is clear but rather long. A guard patrol that takes up a page? This is mostly the usual fantasy trope. Yes, he includes a detail or two in each encounter that adds a bit, but probably not enough to justify things. They are probably best used as a kind of web of relationships, with the party gaining allies, neutral parties, and enemies that they encounter and work with or against as they explore the forest. If this wilderness area surrounded some other adventure, perhaps one that required a lot of travel or fetch quests in the region, then it would really reach its full potential, I suspect. The monsters are straight forward version of what we’ve all seen before but the mundane and magical treasures are much more interesting. Much of the mundane wealth is going to come from non-coin sources, such as pelts and the like, while the magical items tend to be a bit non-standard. This is because …

Lastly, I should comment that this module, like the other Edlritch Enterprises modules, use a generic stat system and is not based on any particular game. They provide a page to describe their stat system and then leave it up to you to convert them to your system. Power level of 5% equates roughly to 1HD and a defense of 50% equates to an AC0 (descending) or AC20 (ascending) at first level. Ive heard people complain and bitch but this is trivial to convert on the fly to any D&Dish system floating around.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/100922/Forest-of-Deceit?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

U3 – Verdant Rage

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Mike Stewart
for Troll Lord Games
Castles & Crusades
Levels 4-5

Druids: Hack ’em on sight or kill them while they sleep? These amoral guys seem to be mainstays of wilderness adventures. Who can blame a DM for throwing a few in?! Just like a doppleganger, you never know when that ‘friendly’ druid is going to hack you down at night and claim that the ‘balance needed to be restored.’

This is a small wilderness adventure with 18 wilderness encounters and ten more in the druids tree. The hook is lame: a dryad shows up in town and begs for help, Seems the local druid in the nearby forest has gone mad after reading a book and is now ‘very bad to everyone.’ This being a typically ruled D&D town, the local lord doesn’t believe her and runs her out. Oh, well, until he calls on the party to go stop the druid because he’s too busy. Oh, the Dryad is being escorted out of town my four female guards, you know, just in case she tries to pull any of her dryad tricks. My problem here is the overuse of the usual tropes and the inclusion of the magical economy elements, namely, that the local lord has a contingent of female guards. This very much smacks of 2e and laziness in design. You have to be a do-gooder to want to go on this adventure. Then again, it’s only a hook and the DM can replace it.

The wilderness encounters are mostly an excuse for the party to mix it up with the typical sylvan creatures: pixies, nymphs, satyrs, treants, etc. The good and shy creatures are generally infected with something that makes them insane and evil. This turns what could be some very unusual motivations and interactions in to a straight hack fest. There are generally no allies to be found in the forest, the sylvan creatures being so insular that, even though they know the druid is evil they won’t do anything to help the party. Everything comes off as a little unoriginal and straight-forward. Move from place to place and hack the forest dweller until you find the tree. Then move around the tree from place to place killing people. There’s some graves to explore, and a shipwreck that can provide a little variety, however there’s a distinct lack of interesting things to explore or play with in the forest.

The magic items are of the typical boring book variety: +3 scimitar, Deck of Many Things, Liber Mortis, etc. Wait?!?! What??!?! Yup, there’s a Deck and an artifact level book. So, yeah, the mundane treasure is pretty boring, 200 sp and 50gp in a chest, for example. The magic treasure could be overpowering and a campaign-killer is the DM is not ready for it. There are a couple of new monsters in the back, lesser undead, bullywugs, and so on. Nothing too interesting.

The starting hamlet is the most interesting part of the booklet. There are eight or so places detailed and most of them have some quirky inhabitants or things associated with them. MARKOONNEN THE MIGHTY is the local wizard, who’s in to letting everyone know how mighty he is. The blacksmith has a habit of shoddy work and the tavern has a MILF/daughter love triangle waiting to happen, with a jealous and burly husband/father waiting to crack some heads when it does happen. It’s hard to justify the module based just on this.

This feels like a very basic adventure. The wilderness exploration element is going to put it above many other, linear, adventurers, however it doesn’t really offer much in the way of new and interesting content or ideas. It feels a lot like something that a you might throw together in a few hours the day before a game. Clearly, a lot of effort went in to it, but it doesn’t feel like polished or original effort.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/20820/Castles–Crusades-U2-Verdant-Rage?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

S4 – A Lion in the Ropes

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Stephen Chenault
for Troll Lord Games
Castles & Crusades
4-8 characters of levels 2-4

This is a VERY well done non-traditional module, at least for the OSR.

During a terrible downpour the party seeks shelter in a small village they come across. The village is locked up tight and refuses entry to the players, sending them to a small church nearby. There the players are met, fed, and bed down. While there they hear of a series of terrible killings that have plagued this area. Locals suspect a dreaded Charon Fiend is responsible. The local manor lord, once a hero, is now too feeble to do much more than sleep. The party, presumably, helps track down the killer. Uh … if they do if they want to go on an adventure tonight, anyway.

This module is a strange beast. It’s probably a mystery/investigation module, since the party has to track down what is killing the villagers and stop it. These sorts of adventures are VERY difficult to pull off at higher levels. Mid-level PC’s usually have access to spells that DESTROY secrets. Find traps, find the path, ESP, Augery, etc: it’s impossible to keep a secret from a mid-level party. This is on purpose of course; dungeons & tombs get much more deadly from their traps at this level of play and the party is expected to use spells to find them and get past them. Unfortunately this makes it VERY hard to get away with murder/your-dastardly-plot. Except of course when the party is low level and doesn’t yet have access to those spells. Thus in this module we get the layers investigating the murders of the villagers. Some night watches and tracking soon leads to a glimpse of the beast and it’s lair, where, it’s finally revealed that .. it’s actually an escaped lion still in his head stock with ropes attached. A stupid ass villager mistook it for the dreaded Charon Fiend. Hmmm, and hey, didn’t the party hear about an escaped lion from a local traveling circus they met beforehand?

That evening a band of humanoid raiders attack the villagers. Inspired by the parties heroics the villagers beat them back and the humanoids attack the tower of the decrepit manor lord. The players head off to lift the siege. Returning to their church lodgings they find their friend killed … The lion was not responsible for the killings, but rather some unquiet dead. The players hack them and, hopefully, put them to rest. Game over.

While there is a timeline and some misdirection I can’t really point to this as being a railroad. There are a great many things in the module which add to an overall atmosphere of dread and melancholy, combined with triumph and loss. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another module handle the issues so well. The party triumphs over the lion and the villagers, inspired, put up a hellacious defense when the raiders attack. This is a nice little bit; it makes the characters actions that day seem to have beyond the simple act of slaying an escaped circus lion. That’s the kind of thing that good campaigns are built upon. The humanoid raiders move on to the old mans tower, which is merely a diversion to allow the unquiet dead to kill the parties ‘friend’ back at the church. When the party returns the dead possess the statues of saints and even a figure from a stained glass window to attack the party. These dead are prisoners abandoned and left to die, unburied, and now can’t rest. Occasionally you’ll run in to a module where the dead rise and cause trouble because of their murder, or not being buried, but this module does a much better job at describing their plight that I’ve seen before. The people and monsters in this adventure act like real real people could, or a monster may, instead of just being random beings of destruction for the party to *hack* for gold and xp.

I do have a few suggestions if you should run this. First, there’s a traveling circus that starts the adventure. I HATE these things; they always seem out of place in D&D modules and there’s always a reason for them to be there. I suggest that, as a player, anytime you meet a circus you immediately state “I kill everyone in the circus.” No matter how much fuss it causes you can be certain that you’ve just saved yourself some trouble. In this instance the circus is innocent of the usual crimes against humanity, however they do provide a clue: that a lion has escaped. There are now two possible outcomes: the party will be clueless because they never pay attention to anything anyway, or, they will immediately chime, in chorus “it’s the lion” when confronted by the Charon Fiend story. MAYBE with a little prep work a few sessions before this one you can get the circus clue in, otherwise it’s too much of a risk of ruining the adventure, IMO. My wife is a MASTER of this kind of stuff when she runs a game. Clues are dropped weeks if not MONTHS in advance. If gives the campaign world a real sense of continuity; things seem to make sense when what’s happened before has meaning to whats currently going on.

Then there’s also the issue with the humanoids attacking the manor lords tower. I have issues with this on two points. First: Why humanoids? Why not just human bandits? You don’t have to have orcs and goblins in an adventure to make it a fantasy. Human bandits generally work just as well if not better. This way there’s a real sense of anxiety when the party meets actual ‘monsters.’ Don’t dilute the word by just tossing some throw-away humanoids at the party. Second, this is really just a diversion to get the party out of the church so the unquiet dead can make a kill. And by ‘make a kill’ I mean, of course, horrifically murder the monk they’ve made friends and bonded with. I know this is a classic technique but man, it gets old. The party ends up feeling like those guys in the WW2 movies: Nah replacement kid, I don’t wanna know your name, you’re just gonna get bumped off by the Jerry’s anyway. Relatives, wives, girlfriends, kindly innkeeps; anyone kind or memorable gets killed off. I don’t have a solution here. In that same vein, the characters investigate the murders because they are the Good Guys. That’s not the strongest hook but it is probably the most used one. You’ll have to come up with something else.

Finally, the DM is going to want to take a close look at the various people in the villages. They are not really described very well, so a little work to develop some NPC backgrounds, quirks and the like should go a long way in helping to being the villages and region to life. When the villagers make their heroic stand against the raiders it’s going to help if the party can put a name and face to them. This adventure s heavy on atmosphere so having the villagers be real people will go a long way to making it feel more real.

This is a quiet little adventure with a strange feel to it. It reminds me a lot of the same feeling I got from Bill Barsh/Pacesetter Games ‘The Thing in the Valley.’ … I’m not sure what that feeling is. A kind of slow burn? Pacing and atmosphere is probably more correct. It’s almost like the feeling I got from of the Ars Magica supplements, especially ‘A Winters Tale.’ A kind of melancholy perhaps. This adventure is not breaking any new ground, is a little wordy in places, has a boring hook, and needs more village/region data personality. It is also one of the best horror fantasy adventurers produced and is worth having.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/101009/Castles–Crusades-S4-A-Lion-in-the-Ropes?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment