tenfootpole.org

Deep in the jungles sits the ruins of a mighty city. It’s king and his elite 6 would scour the jungles for hidden treasures and amassed a horde before disaster struck and their city was laid to ruin. Will you dare to explore the Ruins of Tenkuhran?

I’ve got a problem with this module but I don’t know what it is. Something is very much rubbing me raw. The product starts out with a two-page backstory piece of fiction. In my experience that’s never a good sign. Vampire books start that way. I don’t want epic. I don’t want a history lesson, that’s MERPs domain. I want an OSR module and OSR modules don’t make me wade through two pages of a story that has no real relevance to the adventure at hand. This is a recurring theme over the module: it’s verbose in places that don’t need it and terse in places that need extra help.

Cite! Page 3 has notes for the DM. It includes “Classes from the UA text should be excluded unless you choose to allow them.” and “if a paladin is among the party the inclusion of an assassin should not be allowed.” I’m not sure exactly how to classify this type of advice. I differentiate between this type and the “how to run checking for traps in a game without thieves” sort of advice. Perhaps the later is more of an explanation of a play style and the former is … more directly arbitrary? It’s certainly more campaign specific opinion than fact, and for some reason comes over as preachy. The module is rife with this sort of advice and I groan every time i see it.

Cite! The myths rumors and legends table, with 6 entries, actually contain a small story. In essence you can think of it as a small six sentence paragraph with each sentence being a different rumor. This leaves much of the table in an awkward state. Entry #6 reads “Now, generations later, the ruins have all but nearly forgotten, left to decay back in to the earth as the jungle has expanded and crept upon it, claiming it.” Arg! Out of context!

Cite! Repeating, perhaps verbatim, the description of two two different orc villages in two separate places. Two two orc villages get two different descriptions, and the descriptions of both villages seem to be the same. Just to be clear, that;s two location, each of which has two descriptions (abandoned and not.) This is just wasted space.

The adventure proper resembles a wilderness journey, exploration of surface ruins, and a small crawl. The wilderness adventure features a road and an overland jungle trail. The road is disappointing; It’s really just four encounter located along the road. Further, it’s laid out strange. There’s a introductory paragraph describing the encounter lead-in, then a “numbered encounter” along with monster stats. This means that the text of the encounter description, verbose as it is, occurs BEFORE the number for that encounter. Following the number is the monster stats. This seems to be a non-intuituive way to lay things out. All I can think is that this is meant to be some linear plot-type road-trip arc. The layout makes some sense in that context, or rather, at least I can rationalize it in that manner.

Next comes one of the most confusing parts of the adventure for me. There is an orc village. The DM has two options for running it: inhabited or not. If it’s NOT inhabited then the party will encounter about 24 8HD ghoul-apes living in the huts. If it IS inhabited then the party meets good orcs. The ghoul-ape encounters are going to be very rough at the recommended levels. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, but a party which is not careful is going to hit a TPK before the exploration really begins. I’m not really sure why the good orcs exist. Why not humans? Humanoid monsters are overused in D&D, IMHO, and I would much prefer to see bestial jungle tribesmen and same the ‘monster’ label for the really strange stuff … like the ghoul apes. This is where things get confusing: there are then two more descriptions for orc villages, one abandoned and one inhabited. Much of the text is the same, and I mean copy/paste same, and the setup is the same. I’ve reread the entries several times over the last two days and I can’t figure out what’s going on. It feels like there are supposed to be at least two separate orc villages (the map shows yet another village further on in to the jungle, quite a ways off. I don’t think it’s one of these two villages.) but I can’t figure out how they are related or where they are ini relation to each other. I don’t THINK they are the ‘third’ village; that village may have been overrun by evil, causing the orcs to migrate to their current village location(s)? Anyway, there’s a village of friendly orcs that can used as a base, and a village of ghoul-apes that will rip almost any party to shreds. The organization of them could be much much clearer.

The ruins of the city, near the village(s), are one of the better parts of the adventure. It reminds me of one of the more interesting parts of third and fourth edition D&D. 3E advised that encounter locations be interesting, and perhaps fantastic. 4E pretty much cemented that in it’s published modules. Fights occur in crumbling ruins (DEX checks!) on misty clouds (balance to not fall through!) or in a kitchen with boiling pots (kick a hot soup pot in someones face!) This sort of thing is one of my favorite parts of some of the older adventures. Some random orc would use the goat-leg he was eating as a weapon when the party burst in on him, or so on. Many of the encounters in the surface ruins feel like these little set-peice sort of things. To be sure in many cases it’s because of the monster selections. Harpies in tree singing. Plant-men groves with with animated tree allies, a hag in a crumbling tower, and so on. Lots of monsters with special effects. I like those sorts of things. It adds the variety to an adventure that is needed to keep it from becoming a straight-on boring hack-fest. The 13 or so ruins encounters are on the verbose site of things, with on three or so per page because of their exposition, however they are certainly an interesting assortment of non-humanoid encounters and I approve heartily. It’s almost exactly what I’m looking for in a wilderness ruins sort of exploration. I might have preferred more whimsy and some weird things to play with (magic fountains rule!) but the encounters are pretty good.

From this set of ruins the party will discover another set further in to the jungle, hopefully, and journey to them. The surface ruins in that location are QUITE a bit sorter, really just a monster notation. For example “Mantis, Giant (HP70) This gigantic insect (10HD) is generally benign unless assaulted.” That’s a pretty good encounter description in my book. Maybe just a sentence more on the location or what the mantis is doing, but the length is almost correct. The dungeon beneath the ruins are a deathtrap. In quasi-planer, so each hour each magic item the party has needs to make a save or become less magical/lose a plus. In addition, all spells cast much first overcome a pervasive Dispel Magic aura at 15th level. Ouch! The lose a plus effect is going to be a pain to run and slow the game down. The Dispel Magic effect is very powerful and is going to make the encounters inside all the more tough. The crawl is mostly linear and the descriptions remind me of the Tomb of Horrors. Each room has a detailed description and lots of carvings/curtains/features. In many cases the room descriptions are too verbose for my tastes. Much of the complex is not really interesting and is just an excuse to have a rom with monsters in it. The notable exception is one of the last, which contains a doorway to the throne room of an evil goddess of death. Good Luck kiddies! Sometimes the big red shiny button does NOT lead to a stat increase …

The organization and layout of this could have been much better; having to reread lengthy PAGES to try and figure out what is going on is not indicative of ‘clear.’ The product is also much more verbose than I generally like. The first set of ruins is generally well done but the second needs just a touch more detail. The dungeon and the ape-ghoul village are both VERY deadly. I wish there was more whimsy, more weird things, and more for the party to play with; there’s a lot of hacking and not much exploration.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/86973/The-Ruins-of-Tenkuhran?affiliate_id=1892600

A wagon has gone missing in the nearby swamps and the party is hired to help retrieve the contents.

This is a very short and very deadly lair dungeon. The entire piece is a set up from the beginning. It’s well done, and because of that, very deadly. A merchants wagon has gone missing in the nearby swamps. The party is hired by a mercenary to help locate and retrieve the contents. Things got too rough for him in the swamps and now he needs help fulfilling his contract. After a short three-day trip, with about 14 wandering monster checks (1 on a d10, with mostly animals and a couple of trolls/ogres thrown in), the party will arrive at a rocky outcropping where the mercenary thinks the tracks lead. Inside is a short lair dungeon with ten keyed encounters. Almost every single one is trap and all are meant to soften the party up. For a non-OSR group the dungeon, though short, is going to be a rough one. Many of the traps will do 4d6 or so, and at least one is a likely to result in some character deaths for slow-witted characters.

There’s a method to most of this madness. The mercenary, Garen, is actually ordering take out. He’s a rare Medusan, a male of the Medusa species, and is bringing home some take-out for the wife. When the party reaches the last major room they’ll have to face a greater medusa, an immobilizing trap, and Garen. They are in for a world of hurt.

This is almost too small for a proper review. Garen, the NPC, lives the life that every NPC wants to. He puts up with all of the parties nonsense, delay tactics, and BS, all so he can learn more about them, discover their weaknesses, and take home his general tso. The traps are not much, a few pits with spikes, some green slime (dinner is gonna go bad with that one!) and a net trap. The two monsters feel a little gimpy: one has a ring of invisibility and the other a ring of x-ray vision. I understand that monsters use their treasure, but this feels more than a little like a set-up.

It’s advertised as being appropriate for a single evening, however I suspect it would work better as a side-trek while on another adventure. It’s just too short to be anything more than that. It reminds me a lot of the Ogre cave in B2/Borderlands; just a single room cave with a monster. This cave has a couple of more rooms, and a few traps with a setup, but in reality it’s just a little monster house designed to bring home the bacon, literally.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/20896/Wyrms–Warlocks-Medusas-Hunger?affiliate_id=1892600

Enter the deadly city of the degenerated serpent-people … If You Dare!

It is a rather well known fact that I tread where Solar fear to go, so I dared enter the Nameless City. There isn’t much of a lead-in, just an overly long backstory and a few throw-away lines of a hook; the characters hear rumors of riches in an abandoned city in the desert. There’s no wilderness adventure or wandering wilderness creatures either; this is a site based adventure in the Nameless City, pure & simple.

The remaining portions of the city are rather small, since the civilization is collapsing. There are really only three locales to explore: the wizard pyramid, the temple pyramid, and the palace pyramid. There are about fourteen rooms in each pyramid, scattered in each pyramids two levels. As the encounter quantity would indicate, the maps are rather small and cramped, with mostly linear designs. This strongly limits the exploration aspects of the adventure; the only place to go is generally forward.

The rooms are fairly straightforward and there is a decent amount of duplication between the various pyramids. The food storage room, the cold larder, the initiates rooms, the instructors room, the treasury, etc. There’s a very high number of trapped chests and symbols of [death, etc], and a large number of serpent-people spell-casters, since two of the pyramids are clerical and wizardly. The symmetry goes too far sometimes; the treasuries of these two each contain two books for the MU/CLERIC to gain a level. In all, the place feels too impersonal and rather generic. This despite the fact that there is a LARGE amount of ‘boxed’ text for each room. Except it’s not boxed, it’s in italics, which make it MUCH more difficult to read. The text is very descriptive, in a Lovecraftian way, and it appears to be trying to set a certain mood. I don’t think it works very well;  it’s too hard to read the massive amounts of italicized text, and that much text is too much even if it weren’t italicized.

There are more than a few things I have a problem with. The giant crystal from the authors module The Conquerer Worm makes another appearance. Or maybe it appeared in this module first? In any event, that reuse is a bad thing. AC -6, 400 HP, 90% resistant to magic, only hit by magic weapons, hitting it causes 25 points of damage to the attacker per strike, etc. The authors No Teleport/No Passwall makes an appearance as well, as do several “save at -7” rolls.  Multiple rooms have monsters which surprise on a roll of 5 out of 6, including the black pudding in the privy. Really? There’s no way any player on earth, even my 11 year old son, is going to be surprised by a monster coming out of the privy.

You know why this civilization of serpent-people is dying out? Because NONE of them, with perhaps a single exception, will come to the aid of ANY of the others. They all sit squarely in their rooms waiting for the next party to come through and preparing spells. Deathtrap dungeons are not old school. Hack fest adventurers are not old school. Old school does sometimes contain those elements but appeals to ‘Old School’ to justify bad modules design are, frankly insulting. Creative play and player agency are old school. Limiting options through the use of teleport/passwall bans does not foster player agency, it does THE OPPOSITE. There’s no chance for the players to do much except hack the monsters and suffer the traps. No factions, no real exploration, no weird magic items, no new monsters of note to freak out over, no weird and strange things in the dungeon to play with. No Joy. The stagnation of the serpent-people seems to have leaked over.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/89208/The-Nameless-City-Core-Complete-Rules?affiliate_id=1892600

This is a two level cave system housing jerlamain. It is a good example of a mediocre OSR module.

Bob the Sage is looking for a magic sword. He sends the party to investigate some caves in the mountains.

That’s the extent of the hook. Ok, so, the sages name is actually the more pretentious sounding Alexar, otherwise the hook is presented faithfully. I’m usually a fan of terseness, however Bland is never in style. The background and introduction is suitably brief, coming in at only one page with almost half of that being a rumor table. I wish that one page was a little more interesting. The rumor table could have been an excellent opportunity for building up the caves, the mites that live in them, and the stranger in charge. Instead we get: the strange that passed through the village ten years ago was not of this world. Ahhh, come on! How about mentioning some of the atrocities he committed, or some bizarre behavior? Both of those would have added to the villains reputation and gotten the parties juices flowing. There’s no wilderness adventure on the way to the caves, but there is a very small, and lame, wandering monster table for the wilderness. Kobolds, goblins, wolves, giant spiders, giant ants and stirge. The DM is advised to roll once on the journey to the caves. The monster selection is uninspiring and lends nothing to the adventure and there are no stats provided. It’s pretty much just wasted space.

The adventure takes place in a cave with two levels with about 28 rooms between the two levels. Level one is a trident shape; three different linear maps connected at the beginning. Level two has rooms and corridors surrounding a large underground lake. These are not the type of maps I like seeing. The module is supposed to be an exploration to find a sword, but the maps only lend themselves to a grind, especially level 1. The encounters proper tend toward the verbose side. For example, room 0 of this module:

A twenty foot deep crack in the mountains, with no hand holds or foot holds, drops straight down in to a dark cavern. Torches dropped or lowered in to the crack reveal a passage leading to the south, though no other information is available without dropping down in to the crack. It is best of the characters use ropes to climb slowly down the crack, though the rash among the group may elect to leap down in to the cavern below (suffering normal falling damage.)

That’s a large paragraph that adds almost nothing to the adventure. It does convey the entrance is a cavern pit, but thats it. How about “Sinkhole entrance. 20′ deep.”? There we go: not only does that convey the same information but it actually provides more; now we know how much falling damage to apply. Hmmm, I also usually complain about being evocative, so how about: “Gloomy sinkhole entrance, 20′ deep, located in a misty dell.” Ta Da! Don’t take this as me singling out this room or this product, quite a few modern products do this, which is what I mean when I reference a module or entry as being overly verbose. Encounter keys need to be terse enough to scan quickly, yet convey JUST enough information to get the DM started on the room.

With a two exceptions, the module doesn’t really have anything interesting in it. The new monsters are “Hobgoblin” and “Kobold.” New monsters are supposed to be wonderful and exciting and fill a party full of dread because they don’t know their abilities. “Does not appear in OSRIC document” does not mean it qualifies as a new monster. I wish more folks used bizarre new creations of their own. There are a couple of kobolds, armed to the teeth with magic swords, and some hobgoblins, along with the main bad guy, a ‘new monster’ version of a Gith. The last new monster is a Mite, which appears to be a Jerlamain.

Therein lies the one interesting feature. The wandering monsters on level 1 are all jerlamain, who retreat after one of their number is killed. Those that retreat add their numbers to the NEXT wandering monster encounter. This is a pretty good way to simulate an increasingly large number of monster attacks on the party. The defeated foe gathers more of their number and hit the party again. The party better hit them hard or they are going to have some serious troubles on their plates! The module also contains a great number of dead adventurers. I like that since it adds a bit of foreshadowing to the adventure and gives the caves a sense of history. If these dead folks were elaborated upon in the background/rumors then it would have added to sense of discovery and history of the caves.

A desert wilderness adventure with a small dungeon and vengeance filled villain. A little work could turn it in to a very good adventure.

It’s a story as old as time itself: a servant girl sleeps with the sheik, get pregnant by him, and is then banished to the wastes for being a slut. Except, in D&Dlandia she has gypsy blood, makes a pact with a demon, and turns in to a vengeance spirit that lays waste to the surrounding countryside for well on 300 years now.

The backstory is longer than I would have liked, however it gets an A for effort anyway … The demon has taken over the fetus of the pregnant servant girl, and his fate is now tied to hers. The servant girl/demons rampages go on for 9 months before she lies dormant for awhile, and she eats the uteruses from her female victims but leaving them alive, otherwise killing all others. There’s also a demononess working to free her demon lover from the fetus. To quote Stan Marsh: “Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here.” I Approve! EVen if you don’t, it’s better than killing the spiders in some old ladies cellars.

The adventure is set in and around a wasteland/desert environment. There are extensive rules for dehydration, including the amount of water needed by the party and their animals, how much water spells can create, and the impact of dehydration on characters. There are also extensive rules for heat, including temperature variations during the day and how this impacts characters in various types of armor. There is some off-handed mention of sandstorms and the like. I would have preferred MORE sandstorm and physical environmental issues. The heat and water issues feel more like accounting to me … and just to be clear I do not enjoy accounting, especially while I’m trying to have fun.

The party is going to travel through the desert on some caravan routes, trying to figure out what is going on. The desert is about 240 miles wide and 350 miles long, so, pretty damn large. The wandering monster tables are mostly animals, which I approve of, I just wish they were a little more interesting. Essentially the party will wander around the desert, visiting an oasis or two and some ruins covered in sand. Once they’ve proven themselves worthy the demononess will show up, in disguise, and tell the party what to do, They need to go get a sword, kill a certain special giant scorpion to get it’s blood, coat the sword with blood, then go kill the servant girl/demon. Fetch Quest! This smacks of plot, but only just barely so. The core issue seems to be the demononess relaying the information after the party proves itself. That’s not nearly the best solution to conveying the needed information. I wish it had been better handled.

Most of the encounters are rough. A giant golem with the powers of a rust monster. A group of between 100 and 300 scorpions of various sizes, mountains of undead flowing from a well. I like these.  They present little set pieces for the party to play with. Hopefully the party is a smart one and isn’t going to wade in to an encounter with the scorpion king without some recon work first. That should reveal the VERY large number of giant scorpions. This should trigger some creative play from the party, which is one of the things I’m really for a module to enable. This sort of thing is carried over to the two caves complexes, to a certain extent, which will be major focuses of the adventurers. They are not large, six keys in one and 18 in another, but they show hints of greatness. Just getting to them will be hard; they are on a sheer cliff face the party will need to find a way to reach. One complex has a huge chasm that separates the chambers from each other. Overall though the encounters in the caves are not as interesting. Wilderness encounters, good ones anyway, can be very interesting because of the large number of ways a party can explore them. The enclosed space of a cavern or dungeon allows for less of this freedom, which is one of the reason I like weird and strange things in my dungeon. Those weird and strange things keep the party thinking creatively and keep them in exploration mode, albeit a different type of exploration. Too many of the encounters in the caves are of just another room filled with a beastie.

With a little work this could be a very nice adventure indeed. I would probably beef up the rumors of the main villain play up the uterus-eating thing. Ok, so the module doesn’t actually SAY she does that, but it’s heavily implied. The sort of foreshadowing should really get the party shaking, especially if it’s reinforced through a couple of corpse encounters in the desert. I would probably also beef up the cave systems a bit, maybe through a mashup with module AA#15: Stonesky Delve, or something similar. Those two changes, one minor and one less so, would turn this in a VERY nice adventure.

This is an adventure framework using a Runquest clone system. It has that Runequest feel, of mystic bronze-age fantasy, but is quite a barebones product.

It was a simple mission from the sage: gather some wood from a holy tree in the Whispering Wood. But dreams turn in to reality as the characters explore the mysterious sylvan wood. What evil lurks in the mysterious tombs of this majestic wood?

This adventure module is for the GORE system, a retro-clone of BASIC/Runequest. It involves the characters exploring an ancient wood and almost certainly getting caught up in the conflict within. The wood is about 40 miles wide and 20 miles deep. There are a variety of trail and roads that pass through it, as well as a small river that pools in a lake in the middle of the wood. There is no wandering monster table, but rather a huge boar that roams the woods that the party could encounter. Ol’ Yellowtusk is an interesting idea, but since that’s where the wandering monsters stop … well, I like more variety.

The woods have two notable features. The first is the lake in the middle. Being magical, characters looking in to the lake could imagine something wonderful and jump in and try to join it. Or at night they could imagine something terrible in the lake and jump in and try to fight it. That’s truly the extent of the lake. There’s an island in the middle that’s left to the DM to expand. There’s also a small ridge line near the lake with a bridge that is probably being watched by the badgermen, one of the forests two primary factions. That’s it, nothing more than “probably being watched.”

The two factions in the forest are both very deadly. The first consists of three fairy spirits who do mystic combat with the party who drain MP’s night, and then charm/control the characters during the day. It’s going to be rough to defend against; they are not pushovers. This faction wants the idols of the other faction destroyed and will command the party to do so if they take control of the characters. The other faction is a large tribe (24+)  of badgermen who like to perform live sacrifices once a month. Both groups are essentially immediately and always hostile to the party. The badgermen have a small  16 room temple complex near their lair that they’ve taken over. The temple complex has more than a few very nasty encounters and a couple of tricks in it: a golem that can’t leave it’s room. pools of slime, puzzle rooms, and so on.

Overall, this is just an adventure framework. Two small faction descriptions, without maps, and a small temple complex are not enough to sustain adventure right out of the box. If the GM were willing to put in some significant work  then something more workable can be obtained, but then again that’s true for almost every product. I was disappointed in factions. By both being hostile it gives the party nothing to work with. There’s no Fistful of Dollars available, just a combat with both groups.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/25569/The-Secret-of-Whispering-Wood?affiliate_id=1892600

An old pirate lair in sea saves. The map design, while making sense, is not very interesting, and there’s not enough strange to explore. The detail comes in all the wrong places. It’s a stocking exercise, similar to B1.

Arrrrrrr! Pirates! Treasure! Ghosts! Curses! All this and more awaits as you explore the rumors of The Pearl of Pirates’ Cove.

This module is arranged much in the same way that B1 – In Search of the Unknown was. Each chamber in a group of sea caves has a short description followed by a blank space to write in a monster and a treasure. A table in the back of the booklet provides a list of monsters and treasures for the aspiring DM to populate the rooms with. 15 treasures and 20 monsters are provided to populate the 39 rooms of the sea caves. But … I get ahead of myself.

The module starts with a two full  pages of background and introductions. The background in particular, at a full page, is a little longer than I would have liked to have seen. This being a sort of introductory work, a full page is given on stocking the dungeon with treasures and monsters, along with a few words of advice, such as noting that there are more rooms than monsters and treasures … on purpose. Not every room should have a monster, not every treasure should be guarded, and there should be a lot of nothing in dungeons, so I heartily approve. There’s a small ten entry rumor table, which I always appreciate seeing in a module, and the rumors are better than most. There’s a lot of half-truthes and a few truly useful entries.

The dungeon centers around a group of sea caves in a cove, once the abode of the dread pirate Sally Golightly. Like I said, there’s an longish backstory there …   The sea caves are a chore just to get to; the party will need to rope down from above or climb up from boats below. That’s very nice. It presents a nice challenge to even get to the caves, especially for a low-level party, and provides a reason why they still have not been looted. There are a couple of false cave complexes as well, one of four chambers and one of seven chambers, which should provide a note note of realism … not all dungeons have bright neon welcome signs pointing to the doors. The pirates caves on the upper level have a design that resembles a long corridor with chambers/rooms/doors branching off of it, with a couple of chambers having a second exit. The lower level, where the loot is hidden, is a linear affair of the ‘run the gauntlet’ type: room after room of traps & encounters until you reach the treasure chamber. That makes sense, even though it’s not the design looping and extensive map design I’m usually looking for. There’s a small wandering monster table of six entries which consist of vermin and animals. I like those types of encounters on a wandering table, however a certain Ghost, that of a pirate, is missing from it, which detracts a bit.

The various encounters are on the bland side. The rooms of the upper chambers especially so. Each room tends to be described by what use the pirates had for it and what went on in the room, sometimes with a suggestion of what sort of monster could be placed. “There are many nests apparent” and so on. This is, IMHO, the wrong way to describe a room. I don’t care about the normal contents of the bedroom, even _I_ can make that up. I want new, unusual, strange, and weird to be described. The upper chambers have nothing interesting going on. Nothing strange, unusual, or weird at all. The linear lower chambers are more interesting. A log over a rushing stream. A giant stone face with hollow eyes, several traps, from pits to a homage to the first sequence of the first Indiana Jones movie. I’m a sucker for giant rolling stones. There is a chessboard puzzle in the lower halls, which seems out of place. I would expect to see that in some kind of funhouse dungeon and not in something that is attempting to se a bit more serious. It is, however, a classic puzzle type.

The existence of the lower halls, and the traps, are alluded to in the upper caves by clues that party can find. I like that; the players are rewarded for exploring. I seem to recall that B1 had several rooms already populated by monsters & treasures, as an example for the DM prior to the DM stocking the rest of the dungeon. This module lacks that and could use it if it were aiming to be an introductory product.

A Pathfinder module that attempts to invoke an old school Sword & Sorcery feel. The kick ass cover and name are a bit let down by the contents.

What’s this … a Pathfinder module review?! Indeed gentle readers, but not just any old module …  a Xoth.Net module. These folks have a reputation, from this product and the Bride of the Spider-God book, for publishing old school adventures. Let’s see, shall we? It’s going to help if you imagine those cities and towns from the first Arnold Conan movie while reading the review.

This adventure has an egypt-like setting and centers around the attempts of a beast cult to bring their fallen religion back to the forefront by turning a group of their followers in to beast-men. This effort is being led by a group that has infiltrated the palace.

The module has a bit of a non-standard organization. It describes four separate areas and then describes how those areas can be used to run an adventure. This particular style tends to pop up most often in city adventures: you get the city described and then you get some plots with advice on running them in the city. This tends to create a very open-ended type of adventure and encourages sandbox-like play, which also means, of course, that the DM needs to put in no small amount of effort to flesh things out.

The first section described is the hook. While traveling the players run in to a slave caravan with some beautiful, and scantily clad, female slaves in tow. One of the slaves signals the characters to rescue her, with the implication that the party fight the caravan. This immediately triggered my anti-plot defense system. What if they don’t rescue her? They can’t buy her from the caravan? etc. My fears were largely unfounded though for in the rear of the module there is that nice little section on how to run the adventure. It goes in to a small amount of detail on how to proceed if the party ignores her; essentially reintroducing the adventure in the next city through slaver raids, rumors, and the like. This was a nice surprise; after expecting a railroad I instead found a helpful bus & taxi guide for day trips and further excursions.

The second section is an extremely brief description of the city the adventure takes place in. Seven locations in two pages is not much. Essentially it’s a brief description of the gates, the barracks, and the faceless sphinx … which none of the locals will talk about.

The third section is a description of the royal palace. The party will end up here either quickly if they rescued the slave girl, or slowly if they took the bus & taxi route. The king is old & tired, the advisors are corrupt and plotting, and the party gets to stay as ‘guests’ of the palace. During this stay the party should get a chance to interact with the various NPC’s in the palace and perhaps stumble upon the secret tunnels, as they explore or try to escape. The palace has about 40 or so keyed entries, but that’s not as important as the NPC’s. These sorts of things live or die by the NPC’s personalities, and these just don’t cut it. There’s not enough going on beyond the main plot to sustain things. Reference is made to the various courtiers being held in check by the subtle influences of the core villains, but we get no details of those those courtiers. This would have added an element of factions that could have provided quite a bit more role-playing opportunity. There are a couple of other notable things. First, there’s an absolutely wonderful table that describes what the courtier is up to in the courtiers lounge, if one is present. “Sleeping with jewelry on a nearby table”, “Beating a slave”, ” Counting money”, “make love to a female (75%) or male (25%) servant”, “Being blackmailed”, and so on. That kind of detail is GREAT and screams both ‘old school’ and ‘massive opportunity for roleplaying fun.’ Second, it displays the travesty that the thief class introduced in the Greyhawk supplement. Yes, that means skills. For example: If you make a DC 17 check in any Knowledge check then the Scribe regards you as an intellectual and will be friendly to you. GAH! ABOMINATION! ABOMINATION! I suppose roleplaying it out would be too much to ask? Then again, this IS a Pathfinder module, and that IS a part of the modern game. But it’s not old school, not in my mind.

The final section describes the cultist tunnels, entered through the Palace or the Sphinx. The map is small, with only 15 rooms, but it’s good for it’s size. About half the rooms have a second entrance, so it’s a bit of a looping map design, especially for it’s size. This is great since it allows the party to bypass some areas, set up ambushes, and be ambushed. There is not enough weirdness in it for my tastes, but there is a well done statue trap and one nice environmental issue to deal with. Otherwise it’s a bunch of mostly empty rooms with not much going on in them.

There’s a page that follows the offers advice on how to use the areas to run the adventure. I already went through the hook section advice that given, however there’s a lot of good, and terse, advice on how to run the adventure in the palace and how to run the climax of the adventure, a human sacrifice in the tunnel section. What’s missing here is a general timeline of events. There IS some sense conveyed in this last advice section, that there are events transpiring outside the involvement of the PC’s, however it could be much stronger.

So, it is old school? Maybe. 🙂 There’s a definite Swords & Serpent-men feel, it’s open-ended to a very large degree, and it has a random courtier activity table with a halfway decent, though small, tunnels map. It also has skill checks, standard magic items, and not much for the PC’s to poke/play with, like pools/statues. Given the title it was bit too bland in the atmosphere department. It tries for Swords & Sorcery, but need more cowbell to actually get there. It’s certainly not bad, but will take a lot of work to get a good run out of it. It does have a pretty cool cover though. 🙂

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/114508/Legend-Song-of-the-BeastGods?affiliate_id=1892600