S1 – The Goblin Fair

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Matt Finch and James Hazeltine
for Airweaver Games
d20/3e
4th-6th levels

By the dark of the gibbous moon, the fantastical folk of the fey realms gather for one day ay the Goblin Fair: to bargain with merchants of the unique, rare, and the bizarre; to duel with centuries-old enemies by starlight; to dally with faerie maidens by moonlight; to trade and quarrel, feud, parlay, revel and frivol. Ogres and dryads, hags and giants, elves and goblins, centaurs and hedge fey, they gather under the darkling green boughs of the Oldainhan Forest. The wizard Brandon Mistcloak has been trapped by his enemies in his manse Sparrowspell. The key to his rescue is the enchanted book, Taig Tell. He offers mysterious and wonderful rewards for the return of the Book. WIll the party enter the Oldainhan on the trail of the enchanted book to win the wizard’s reward> A trail leads to … The Goblin Fair.
While browsing the 3e/d20 wholesale booth at Origins, looking for 3e Judges Guild conversions, I stuck my hand in to a steaming pile of d20 and out came this little guy. Low and behold, it was authored by Matt Finch! A bit of casual research appears to indicate that it’s the first item published with his name on it, a full four years or so before the OSRIC monsters book and Dungeon Hazards were released. It looks like the publisher, Airweaver, printed just this one supplement and then disappeared, along with everyone else involved in the booklet, except for Finch. There was a lot of crap put out in the d20/3e era … but this is one of the examples of the good ideas leaking through. It’s got some great content surrounded by an iffy adventure.
First, a disclaimer. I like fairies, at least as long as they are being bizarre. They fall in to the same irrational pot as barrows, slimes, molds, and fungi, and old world fairy tales. For whatever reason I really dig the kind of capricious and bizarre behavior that they can bring. Perhaps because they were the last remnant of otherworldly behavior in a game that turned almost all humanoid monsters and demi-humans in to just another example of ‘humans with points ears?’ Don’t know … but you’ve been warned.

This puppy is about 45 pages long. The first eight pages are composed of boring ass introduction and flavor text. The last eight pages are appendices with monster stats, etc. There are fives pages near the end that have ‘the adventure’ … recovering a book. The huge section in the middle, about 35 pages, detail the Goblin Fair. That’s the best part of the book and should be easy to lift in to whatever game you’re running.

The adventure here is just a throw-away in order for the players to experience the fair. There’s a jerk of a wizard trapped in his house and he needs the party to retrieve a book so he can get out. The party goes to the fair to find the ogre mage with the book, only to finally discover he sold it to a cloud giant. Going to the giants castle revels the book was stolen by some wererats. The party kills the rats, gets the book, and goes back to the wizard. Even this portion has a certain charm to it. Sparrows pesters the characters until they talk to the wizard. Polite bugbears invite the characters to dinner. Dobbin the idiot hill giant at the castle gates reads his instructions to the party exactly as written down. The cloud giant is not home but his pretty human wife is, giving the party 30 minutes to get the book from the rats … while she flirts with them. Finally, the mouse hole in the kitchen is 2 feet wide and 3 feet tall! These are all excellent little touches which give the adventure that fairy tale and fey feel that I enjoy so much. They are also surrounded by MOUNTAINS of text. Mountains of read-aloud text. Mountains of DM text. Mountains of text Text TEXT. So much so that it makes it hard to pick out the details needed to run the adventure. While it’s strongly implied that the bugbears, hill giant, and rats all attack the party it never actually SAYS that in the adventure. For example, the hill giant picks up his club and prepares to attack, and so on. So, it’s not a railroad in that sense, which I’m very happy to see coming from Finch.

The Goblin Fair portion makes up the largest section of the book. There are three encounters on the road through the forest to the fair, 27 booths detailed at the fair, and 23 random encounters the party can have. That’s quite a bit; there are village and town supplements which don’t have as many encounters in them. They almost all have that whimsical quality which separates PH elves from the fairies of old. There’s a bridge on the road to the fair with a goblin next to it in bright red pants and yellow boots who claims to own it and charges a fee for using it. If the party gives him a hard time he calls to his buddies/renters, Mort and Tom Crawlmeat, the trolls who live under the bridge. OF COURSE there are trolls under the bridge and OF COURSE the trolls are named Mort and Tom! More perfect bridge troll names I have never heard! In other encounters a hideous spider wants a kiss, and two elves (REAL fucking elves, mind you!) are skeet shooting goblins with a catapult and their bows. I know I bitch a lot about read-aloud text, but the text in this section is priceless, full of a dry wit. One of the encounters at the fair is an Elven Knight on a White Warpig. The entire fair portion is full of this kind of content. Booths for the party to explore and whimsical encounters for the party to interact with, angry chickens, talking stags, hags, drunk ents, peacocks, slavers … it’s all great fun.

This is full of imagination, if not terseness.

Posted in Level 4, No Regerts, Reviews | 1 Comment

The Purple Worm Graveyard

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Tony Dowler

for Planet Thirteen

Labyrinth Lord

Levels 1-3

It is said that when the largest and most ancient of purple worms know that the time of their death is near, they make their way through rock, earth, and water to the legendary Purple Worm Graveyard. The graveyard is said to lie somewhere in the barren Rockspyre mountains, but its exact location is unknown. Now and then an adventuring expedition sets out on a hunch or clue seeking the graveyard. Most return empty-handed and dispirited. Some never return. But a few, just enough to keep the legend alive really, come back with whispered tales of subterranean fields littered with a fortune in purple ivory, unguarded and ripe for the take.

This module, while short, is illustrative of many of the aspects that make up a good module. That’s not too much of a surprise since The Dungeon Alphabet is noted as a portion of the inspiration for the adventure. The setting, a place where purple worms go to die, is mythic without being absurd or overly heroic. The motivation is one of the best: GREED. All that purple worm ivory is worth a fortune. 🙂

The dungeon is has only about fifteen encounters while the map is has only one loop. While the map is visually interesting the small size and simplicity of it makes it hard to support the full type of exploratory play that I typically enjoy. I’m sure many people will run this as a short one-off. I do quite a lot of those for my wife’s meet-up and I typically prefer something that the players can’t fully explore in one session as a one-shot. Shadowbrook Manor, or Tegal for example. I like the air of mystery that these larger environments provide when they can’t be fully explored in a single session. It gives that feeling of the unknown and of things going on around the players that I think they really enjoy.

Most of the complex is composed of a ‘temple’ to the worm god, while only a couple deal with the large cavern that serves as the graveyard. The very first encounter, with a magic mouth at a T intersection, immediately brings to mind that illustration in the … Players Handbook? of the party that meets the magic mouth in the hallway. Ah, nostalgia, you are a powerful force! It’s also a great way to start an adventure, as the graffiti in both Stonehell and Rients megadungeons prove out. There are a couple of trap rooms which seem to have come straight out of a less deadly but still Goldberg-esque version of Grimtooth. The rest of the dungeon is full of the strange little things that I equate D&D with: paintings you can crawl through, puddles which are ooze, topless maggot nagas, strange statues, weird pools of water, mushroom gardens, and the ‘Dungeon Moves.’ Evidentially these little 3-effect charts were popularized in the Apocalypse World book. Old time D&D players will recognize them as slightly standardized versions of Tricks. The player interacts with something in the dungeon and then rolls 2d6 plus a stat bonus/penalty. Good rolls get you something positive, low rolls get you some penalty. These little subsystems were a common part of older D&D games and it’s nice to see them make a return.

The graveyard proper is a push your luck contest with the party. The more ivory they gather the more money they’ll get and the greater the chance that a purple worm will show up … a career-ending purple worm in all probability. There are three magic items of interest and all have that extra detail that I enjoy. For example, Beebart’s Dagger gets a little one sentence physical description, and a one sentence flavor text description of its effect: +2 to hit but not damage. The other two magic items are just as good, especially a very large gem that has to be destroyed to be used … tough decision there.  In a move that Gygax could have learned from, there is a brief 1-page listing of all the monster stats on the last page of the adventure. This shows an understanding of what is useful in actual play. It’s a pain to look things up and flipping to the last page/back cover is much simpler. These sorts of GM aids are what show to me that the module was playtested before it showed up in its final form.

This is an interesting little product and well worth picking up, if just to learn from.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/93562/The-Purple-Worm-Graveyard?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 1 Comment

FLA01 – The Secrets of the Summoning Chamber

Posted on August 6, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Delmar Watkins
Fifty Latches
OSRIC
Levels 3-5

An ancient wizards lair now holds more than just the remnants of failed experiments. It is up to the brave adventurers to end threat to the nearby town and plunder the Wizard’s summoning room.

This is a short little adventure consisting of eight encounters. Yes, encounters. The layout of the adventure emulates the fourth edition style. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just usually bad in practice. You know, stat blocks, battle maps, terse room descriptions. Those could all be used to create a great old style adventure. It’s just usually surrounded by a bad adventure. And it’s bad here.

There was a wizard and he had a dungeon he used for his experiments. Something went wrong and he died in it. A thousand years pass. Some ghouls take up residence. Then some bugbears move in and wall up the ghouls and the older wizard portion of the dungeon. Then the party shows up.

Unfortunately the encounters are right on top of each other. It seems likely that the designer intended for the encounters to be separate and distinct, while in an older style adventure the monsters would pull from their allies in the next room. For example, encounter one has four bugbears and six dire wolves. Encounter two has five more bugbears behind a door on the encounter one room. Encounter three has six bugbears and two giants rats behind the door on the other side of the encounter one room. And so it goes. At best the encounters have tactical advice for the DM. The rooms themselves offer very little beyond the monsters in them and the tactical elements they use. The magic items are all book related and just listed at the end of the encounter key. The room descriptions are done in a terse format that somehow pads out the adventure.

Light: none.
Smells: None.
Entrance: Door to the east, locked.
Ambient: A chill fills the air.
Inhabitants: One banshee.
Room Contents:
Straw in NE corner
Skeleton in NW corner
Mold in SW corner
Quick Descriptors: pulverized, mangled, destroyed, decimated, crushed, splintered.

It’s all very … I don’t know. Dry? I get what the designer is trying to do but somehow the impact is lost, probably because there’s nothing to it other than dry flavor text. This is then further padded out by having a stat block for each creature, including all of their saves and THAC0.

I m at a loss in figuring out how to describe of review this more. Several of the layout ideas are interesting. Certainly noting lighting and sounds is useful, but perhaps would be better if somehow noted on the map instead. The inclusion of elements to be used in combat, a well or a pit to get thrown in to, are certainly welcome as well.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/64298/The-Secrets-of-the-Summoning-Chamber?affiliate_id=1892600

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The Sanctuary Ruin

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Eric Jones
for Ludibrium Games
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 1-3

The Bleak Tower, seat of the Margrave, liege of the border province of Blackmarch—the stage is set for a classic dungeon delve, unexpected villains, and a place for adventurers to rest and recuperate not without its own mysteries.

This is the third adventure, of three, that I’ve reviewed from Lubidrium Games. The first two, Ironwood Gorge and Kingmaker, were quite excellent. This one is a more basic but VERY well done for what it is; you can see many flashes of the designers talent in it even though the adventure is more mundane. If you don’t like mushroom men and gonzo and instead prefer orcs and goblins then I certainly recommend this adventure.

It’s set in and around the Ironwood Forest near the Bleak Tower. The tower, and it’s inn, is meant to be a home base for the party while they explore the environment. The home base is quite confined, consisting of the front door of the tower, which the party are not going to get past, and the small inn. The inn has four characters described: the innkeeper, his wife, the smith who lives out back, and a provisioner who hangs out in the common room. These re not in depth description, just a sentence or so in most cases, but they do convey a great deal of information and I found they really helped me get a good picture of the NPC in my mind. This is invaluable in playing them in a game and the ability to do this in just a couple of words or sentences is a rare talent … the designer is to be lauded.

The adventure is in four parts. There’s an initial encounter on the road before the party gets to the tower. There’s a wilderness journey to some ruins, with a single programmed encounter in the forest and lots of opportunity for wanderers. There’s the ruins themselves and then finally there’s the power behind it all.

The initial encounter has the party stumbling across some goblins on the road who have ambushed a wagon and killed most everyone. It’s actually hard for me to think of something much more basic than this in an adventure. And yet … the designer does a great job describing what’s going on. They goblins are having a jolly old time roasting the flank of a donkey on the road while a dead dwarf peppered with arrows lays nearby. The leader has himself set up on a big old chest and I can just see his pot belly hanging out while he smacks on something, his face and hands greasy with meat, while the halfing in the chest underneath him squirms to get out. That’s some GREAT imagery, done with a bare minimum amount of words, that really helps my imagination when running this encounter. This encounter leads in to the inn at the tower, with its included rumor table, that will lead the players to try and find the Ruined Sanctuary.

Part the Second is the wilderness adventure to the ruins. Following an old dirt track takes the players through the Ironwood Forest for 35 miles. At a movement rate of 30 miles per day and a wandering monster check of 1 in 6 once per hour, that means roughly 6 random wilderness encounters before the party reaches the ruins. This would mean encountering 2 2hd toads, 10 goblins, 1.3 3HD giant spiders and 1 5HD cockatrice, long with one of those encounters repeated. Ouch! And thats in addition to the one static encounter at some mini-ruins on a hill with 8 goblins and a MU. (Which, again, has a great but short description associated with it. One day I’m going to deconstruct how he gets such good results from such short text.) Anyway, the wanderers feel a little heavy to me. Normally I’m ok with some heavy hitters on the table but I also like a good variety and a four entry table loaded down with heavy encounters seems a little rough to me.

The ruins have some stairs going down … along with a secondary entrance i the party searches well. I LOVE dungeons is a second entrance; it gives the party a chance to sneak around and try and be quiet before going all hack and slash and variety keeps the dungeon and interesting. The map has 20 encounter areas and is a mix between worked stone and natural caverns. The map has five or six loops in it and is quite well done for being such a small one. There’s a natural underground river, a bridge over it, tunnels that go over and under others, collapsed tunnels that the DM can expand with their own content, pools, chasms, obstructions, mini-stairs … I’m quite pleased with it. I like the extra detail provided by the multi-level terrain features and rubble; these help me run interesting combats and also break up the monotony of Just Another Dungeon Corridor. The loops help the party avoid combats or come at rooms from a different direction, as well as allowing the party and the monsters to ambush and be ambushed … and in this dungeon, flee for their lives. The goblins have the front door locked, which is going to to be the first challenge for the party. Beyond this there are A LOT of goblins present, and in several rooms the goblins are going to have the upper hand, tactically, if the party just hacks in. There is a crazed NPC in the dungeon, as well as hidden rooms you have to swim/wade through to get to, and great rot grub encounter. (I LUV rot grubs!) At some point in the adventure the dungeon is going to be raided by orcs also! This kind of stuff is BAD ASS. It makes it feel like this is a real place in the real world …. things happen outside of the actions of the party. Another example is how the goblins react to the party. If the party makes a decent incursion and then leaves then the goblins gather some poison mushrooms and poison the inns well, making everyone sick. What?!!? Monsters counter-attacking the parties base!?! Unheard of! And absolutely wonderful! Further, the orcs are smart ad tough and they use fire well. It is suggested that they be introduced by a flaming goblin that comes screaming at the party in the direction of the entrance … another example of great imagery introduced through terse writing.

The fourth act is taking care of the powers behind things. It’s short, deadly, and can catch an unprepared party with its pants down, to murderous ends. The treasure seems a bit light for a gold=xp game, and while there is a bronze cup and/or gold necklace thrown in, there not a great deal of variety in the mundane treasure. What little magic there is mostly book items, with a single new items thrown in. I do like my magic items to be more wondrous than book, as I feel it adds more mystery and wonder to the game.

The adventure feels more 1E than 0E, what with its goblins, orcs, and the like. This makes it very hard for me to get excited about it. I read another review of this module which indicated something to the effect of this module getting a lot right, unfortunately a lot of first level modules before this one also get a lot right. Well, that guys wrong. Not a lot of modules get things right. Most are garbage, even most of the TSR stuff. This module absolutely gets it right. I wouldn’t hesitate keeping it around, even in a 0E game. The ruins/inn would make a great location in a sandbox game, and might replace the goblins/orcs with bandits/raiders in order to emphasize the weird more.

It is seldom the case that I like everything a publisher puts out once they’ve got multiple modules for sale. Ludibrium is the exception. I can heartily recommend picking up all three of their modules. They are PDF, so they are inexpensive as well.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/83877/The-Sanctuary-Ruin?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Level 1, No Regerts, Reviews | 1 Comment

CLA4 – The Ruins of Ramat

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by John Adams
Brave Halfling Publishing
Labyrinth Lord
1st Level Characters

A little girl comes running and crying into the center of the village. When questioned, she sobs that she and her dog were playing just outside of town by that old stone building on Witch’s Hill, when a giant, clawed creature came up out of the ground and took her dog. The girl is obviously completely terrified and her dog, which never normally leaves her side, is nowhere to be seen. You and your companions volunteer to look into the matter. After all, local legends say that vast amounts of treasure lay under the darkness of Witch’s Hill. The village elders agree to let you and your party investigate the incident; indeed they almost seem relieved to do so.

This is a very basic and very traditional first level adventure. The dungeon is pretty small, just 17 rooms or so, and is laid out in a giant square corridor with rooms intersecting it or branching off of it. It’s a pretty basic design that is augmented by a pretty basic wandering monster table: normal rats, giant centipedes, giant bats, and skeletons. That’s some pretty basic monsters … probably too basic. I generally like my wanderers to be doing a little something when they are met. Gnawing on a body, pooping on the parties head … SOMETHING. The dungeon entrance is a slick and moss covered rubble stair that enters in to a rubble chamber with sunlight filtering through the hole in the ceiling and a giant spider in the room. That’s one of the most interesting room in the dungeon. The place is full of vermin, spiders mostly, and undead. And by “full of” I mean 9 skeletons, a shadow, a huecuva, some bats, and two tentacle monsters awaiting some japa^H^H^H^H PC’s.

I find it extremely difficult to write reviews for products like this one. I gush incoherently about great adventures and I tear in to the ones that set my teeth on edge, but these sorts of “generic dungeon crawl” adventures are the hardest to write about. I don’t consider myself a very imaginative person anymore but even _I_ could come up with this adventure on the fly. It’s just not a avery interesting place to explore. The environment is not evocative at all, giving the DM very little to work with in order to fill it out with detail. It feels like …drudgery, I think … some kind of 9 to 5 in a job you don’t particularly like dungeon. I want a friday night adult pool party dungeon, full of liquor and loose women. I want something that makes you fantasize and gets your imagination going. Something that the party gets excited about adventuring and makes then scream or dare each other to ‘Sit in the chair! Sit in the chair!’. [I knew damn well I was gonna sit on that throne at Rients’ GaryCon game.]

This module tries sometimes. The entrance is evocative, although a bit wordy. The hentai monsters are new and would probably freak the party out … but they are not really meant to be fought. The idea is that the party finds a certain artifact in the dungeon, fails a save, and is then compelled to go to the main temple to place the artifact on the main alter, which magically destroys all of the undead and the hentai monsters. To do this the party has to find some non-obvious secret doors and solve a puzzle. I find it hard to believe very many parties will find the doors. Normally this wouldn’t be such a big deal, and perhaps even be a good design issue … leaving something for the party to return to at a later date. This time though the hentai monster room specifically states that the party has to be very skilled and very lucky to defeat the tentacle monsters without the spear. In a megadungeon would be ok but in a small one like this I think it may be pushing things a bit. Maybe you could weave this in to a sandbox setting and have the party come back level after level trying to figure out whats up … but as a one-shot and/or isolated fire and forget dungeon it’s more than

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/65697/The-Ruins-of-Ramat-CC?affiliate_id=1892600

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AW2 – The People of the Pit

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Alphonso Warden
Brave Halfling Publishing
OSRIC
Levels 5-7

Several millennia back, the peoples of the mighty Kingdom of Merritt entered into all-out war with their long-time nemesis, the People of the Pit, a nefarious race of slug-like creatures hailing from a vast subterranean city lying on their northern border. Though the battle was hard fought, with both sides initially incurring heavy losses, the Merrittians in due course gained the upper hand, almost wholly exterminating their foe. Even the very god of the People of Pit was banished to the lower planes by a cabal of Merrittian magic-users and clerics, or so they thought. Recently, the evil within the city of the People of the Pit has surged yet again, and it is up to you to see that it doesn’t spill out into the surrounding lands.

This is more of a setting than an adventure and it falls wholly in the the Weird Fantasy category. A crazed old man stumbles in to a bar and relates a story to the party of strange creatures and fabulous treasures in a ruined city underground that is nearby. The party finds a huge cavern full of weird alien buildings. During the day it’s full of vermin and slave warriors while at night the strange slug-like People of the Pit materialize in and perform their weird rituals. That’s about the extent of the adventure. The party is expected to raid the city, I guess, killing and looting. I’m not really complaining about the whole ethics of the situation but rather the motivation for it. As the DM you’re going to have to put in some not so small amount of work to motivate the players to explore the city and more to add detail to otherwise generic weird fantasy locations. It reminds me quite a bit of the open and somewhat generic portion of the Vault of Drow.

The cavern is roughly circular with a 3600 foot diameter. About 1/5’s if full of a lake with a temple on it. The rest of the cavern has several small ponds in it, some strange forests and maybe 50 or so other structures. The other structures are either homes, armories, warehouses, or libraries. Within the type of building each building will have the same floorplan and the same description. There is a slight amount of localization in the residences depending on it being occupied by slaves of Pit People and the class of the occupants. For example, IF there is a chest, and the resident is a wizard, it will be wizard locked and fireballed. Otherwise if it mechanically locked and Glyphed. The contents come off of several 10-entry or 20-entry tables at the end. Most of it is 1000gp treasure or some minor magical item, like a _2 mace or scroll of cure light, although the occasional Ring of Regen or Necklace of Missiles shows up. The Armories are much the same, except you might (50%) find a +2 weapon instead of a +1. The random lakes are ALL full of giant crayfish and water weirds. The forests are all full of Pit Tree monsters. It is this kind of repetitive description/encounters that waters down the settings more bizarre and imaginative elements. What’s left is random scenic tidbits of bizarre and weird fantasy surrounded by repetitive generic elements.

An additional map is provided for the High Temple of the Pit. It has 21 room on two levels and has a long corridor with other dead-end corridors and rooms branching off of. The temple has a lot of save or die traps, and worse. There are five in the first five rooms, including the old ‘doorway is actually a sphere of annihilation’ trap. Each room appears to have some kind of major trap or another, with a couple having some major magic items also, like a staff of the magic or mace of disruption. There’s A LOT of magic in this adventure and A LOT of high level items in the temple. One or two rooms have something interesting, like the rooms that rains normals slugs on the party, but for the most part the encounters are a bit uninspiring. Everything is presented is of such a dry mechanical nature that its hard to wade through it all.

I spite of this place being a strange and bizarre land, all of the magic items are mundane. +1 swords. Scrolls of cure light, staff of striking, etc. Everything comes out of the book. A real opportunity was lost in not providing more unique items. You’ve got slug-like creatures from the damn of time and … + 1 swords. Almost every creature the party meets will be 7th level or so and many come in groups and thus I find it hard to believe that the level 5-7 range is accurate. The entire adventure seems to have a mis-placed sense of trying to create horror. It thinks horror is death trap or a group of 16HD monsters who attack your party immediately. That’s not horror, that’s just bad design. Inn of Lost Heroes is horror. s written this module will kill parties that are close to twice its recommended level. Sending long-running characters on a death mission like this make you the worse kind of DM possible.

A 10-th level party playing a one-shot might find some fun in this, especially if the DM puts in a lot of work to help augment the excellent atmosphere with encounters that match. It could also be mined for the atmosphere and the few encounters which are actually interesting, such as the slug rain.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/61385/The-People-of-the-Pit?affiliate_id=1892600

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RAM4 – The Magic Balance

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

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

An eccentric wizard experimenting with planar travel has upset a critical balance in the Realms of Arkonus. With magic in Arkonus gone awry, can the PCs find the cause and restore the balance?

This adventure is a railroad from start to finish. I don’t like railroads.

The party is summoned to listen to the DM read a page of text at them. “Blah blah blah Magic is broken. Blah blah blah End of the World. Blah Blah blah.” Somewhere in all of that text is the mission but I probably didn’t hear it because I wandered off to watch some Tv commercial. It doesn’t matter though because one player has his nose in a rulebook, another is in the kitchen getting something to drink to dull the pain while the third is sighing and looking looking at the ceiling wishing he’d stayed home and watched his ceiling paint dry instead of mine. Anyway, … I digress …
The party is sent to a pigsty town to investigate some miracle magic that’s still working. The party is then hassled by the people at the temple where the new healing artifact is; they don’t want to let the party in. This in spite of the party having an official letter/orders from the people in charge and in spite of the whole end of the world thing and in spite of the fact that the party is 10-12 levels higher than almost everyone else in town. Everyone except all of the guards, who of course are all 5th level because that’s what little D&D villages are full of, hordes of 5th level fighters who work for 1cp a day guarding the doors to temples. … I digress …

The party will either stand in line to get in to the temple while being subjected to more flavor text or they will go see some town guard who will flavor text them some more and hassle them and belittle them and then finally let them in or the party will do the right thing and just murder every stinking no-good worthless NPC they lay their eyes on. (Please insert profanity in to that last clause as you see fit. The author of this review is the son of a sailor and thus those looking for an authentic non-wattered down experience should insert profanity quite quite liberally.) If I was playing this adventure I would ABSOLUTELY just start laying to people and killing them. The adventure has barely started and I’m already bored to death with it. And I’m taking shit from people in this little town?!? Oh, you’re too busy to let me in to the temple, even though I’ve got an official latter and I’m saving the world? Well, lets see if your attitude improves after a bit of the ultra-violance, shall we? How about I just rip your head off and drink your brain using whats left of your spinal column as a soda straw? I’m TWELFTH you little POS nobody! Get the F out of my way so I can do whatever I’m supposed to so I can go home. … Whoopsee … I digress …

Inside the temple the party will meet the town sage next to the artifact and he’s just too busy to help the party or even answer questions. … because every town of every size has to have a stuck up absent-minded town sage who’s entire goal in life is to be a shit to the party of high level adventurers on an official quest to save the world, oh, and to drop the one hint on where the next stop on the fing railroad is. Yeah? Too Busy, huh? Well how about I rip out your stinking eyeballs and shove them down your throat? You think you might then have time to fit me in to your very busy schedule of sitting on your ass and taking notes from the front row? So how about I just give up all pretext about caring about what goes on in this adventure and take out my frustrations of being stuck here by just beating the crap out of you in new and interesting ways until you give us the one piece of fing information you were put int he fing module to provide us with? … Sorry, getting carried away …

But Wait! There’s More! That’s right kiddos, there’s another stop on this railroad! The temple closes for the day and everyone is sooooo verrrrrrryyyyyyy tired so the PC’s have to leave … yeah yeah, it doesn’t matter you can kick all our asses and are very important people and have an official letter/mission and are trying to save the world. 6pm, time to leave. This has to happen to all of the villagers will leave the temple so some thieves can pick that EXACT moment to break in and steal the artifact. Not wait till deeper night. Not wait till everyone is out of the temple. Oh no, that wouldn’t work because then the party wouldn’t be forced in to a fight. Instead a group of 5th-11th level flunkies show up to get killed by the party while their 11th level thief boss steals the artifact. He’s an actual fing quote from the adventure “If the PC’s try to stop the thieves: They will not succeed. Darius WILL get the artifact and escape through the roof.” What the fuck man? Why even bother playing the adventure? Oooooo, haven’t had a combat in awhile, better toss something at the party to kill! To make matters worse the townspeople then being to blame the party and start hunting them down to kill them. “The Party must flee or die!” Joy! Hows about we just stay in this little shithole town and kill every single last one of the townspeople, burn down their town and have some fun!?!” DIE MOUTHBREATHERS! … sigh …

The town sage gave you the name of another sage in the swamps to go see. He tells you to go kill a dragon who has a magic item you need. Killing the 18 HD green dragon, which is clearly a 3E conversion and not a 1E dragon, has the party meeting the angry townspeople again (see! should have killed the fuckers when we had a chance!) Quick all you shitty little PC’s, run away in to the swamp! Oh, look, the towns people are getting closer, and now they are falling behind again! Oh, my, look, its the Hierophant Druid! He’s saved us! Golly gee Mr DM, after listening to all that STUPID ASS BORING FLAVOR TEXT you’ve been bombarding us with in the swamp I’m sooooooo thrilled that I get to listen to more flavor text from the Hierophant Druid so he can railroad our asses to the next stop on this stupid fucking adventure. Hey, I’m never killed a Hierophant Druid before ….

Ok, ok, we use the shitty fucking amulet from the dragons lair to go the divine library … why couldn’t Daphne have been there instead? Oh boy! Shitty little vignettes in the Science Fiction, Romance, History, and Future sections! Ha. Ha. Ha. Look, a scene out of Romeo & Juliet is being played out by ghostly figures. Oh! A Star Trek XV book! Finally the party gets to kill a 12ft tall rabbit in order for a 20th level sorcerer to teleport them to the next railroad stop. Kill some monsters, don’t eat the poison fruit, kill a lich, pick up the evil half of the artifact, combine it with the good half, restore the Magic Balance, get the f out of the DMs house and go home and ponder if you really want to put yourself through this again next week.

Wait, hang on … combine the good artifact with the evil one? When did we get the good one back? Oh, that’s right, THE GOOD ARTIFACT IS COMPLETELY FUCKING IGNORED after it get violence s stolen. The party is given absolutely no chance to recover it. Recall that the party is being chased by the townspeople who are out for blood with NO CHANCE of being reasoned with and the next railroad stop is the sage in the swamp, the green dragon, the divine library, etc. Not only a railroad, but a broken one at that.

On to the good. The beginning read aloud portion has a Q&A aspect at the end. There’s a good chance for the DM to get his Horta on by yelling “PAIN!” over and over again. That could be good for a laugh. Also, the green dragon has protected his lair with A LOT of magic mouths. Again, that could be fun also. Otherwise, you’re better off writing erotic version of Star Trek where all of the characters are furries, like Kirk is an Ocelot or something, and putting in a furry version of yourself as the star of the story.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/81852/The-Magic-Balance?affiliate_id=1892600

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The Inn of Lost Heroes

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Peter Spahn
for Small Niche Games
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 3-5

Everyone loves a good barroom brawl. But what happens when the fight gets out of hand and innocents are harmed? Witness the innkeeper’s wife Evelyn Mortigan. When her entire family is killed in a fire caused by drunken adventurers, she utters a curse with her dying breath and returns to torment all those who would practice the adventuring trade. Can the characters escape her wrath, or will they be forever trapped in the Inn of Lost Heroes?

It’s interesting that this module and The Grind Gear both came out in the same year. Both deal with the same theme: tavern/inns that hate the murder hobo customers that they serve. Where The Grinding Gear seemed like a typical adventure, and a bit forced, this adventure module presents the idea in a much more robust manner. It has some strong imagery, strong horror themes, and like most good horror modules (and there are very few of those) it could be swapped out pretty easy to almost any time period or genre. It’s a pretty interesting adventure if your players can get it in to it.

The characters visit an inn. There’s a boisterous crowd inside. A fight starts .. and then all hell breaks loose. The characters, and most of the other people in the inn, have actually entered a cursed inn. The Charred Hag was once the innkeepers wife, loosing her family in a fire to the very customers they served, and after hanging herself and cursing the place now traps and kills groups of adventurers. The inn shows up in various places looking like any normal inn inside and out, and then suddenly things change. The inn exists in three forms: normal, ash, and burning. The normal inn is the one the players first visit. It may reappear several times during the adventure. The ash inn shows the inn after the fire, covered in a soot and ash. The imagery the designer uses to describe it paints the perfect scene of quiet horror. Many of the rooms have different or additional descriptions for when the inn transitions to ash mode. Finally there’s the burning inn. This depicts the inn during the fire that killed the tavern family. along with the chief opponent: The Burning Hag.

There are a series of encounters provided for the normal inn and for the ash inn. The normal inn encounters are essentially foreshadowing. Encounters with the ‘living’ versions of ghosts that may be encountered later, or with other adventuring parties the party may meet later. There are A LOT of these available for the DM, 14 or so, so there’s a wide variety to pick from. This is also where the only railroad is introduced: for the adventure to take place a fight has to start. Several of the encounters encourage a fight to break out. If it doesn’t then an event is provided to make sure one does break out. That essentially starts the adventure and is the only railroad present. Once the party goes in to the ash world there are a different set of encounters provided. These range from ghostly images of past events to encounters with other adventuring parties also trapped in the inn. There’s also 18 or so random wandering encounters that the party can have in ash world. These are great! Packs of mad adventurers tearing living horses to pieces in the stables, or minor hauntings, or chance encounters with potential allies. The entire list of encounters is wonderful; very few feel like complete blow offs. In addition there is a full write up in the back of all of the NPC’s and the factions that the party will or may encounter. I love that kind of content; I think it really helps a DM transform an adventure from Normal to Excellent. Having just a bit of inspiration for NPC interactions between themselves and between the party can do so much to really bring the adventure to life. The way the adventure plays off of stereotypes is nice also: fellow adventuring parties in the inn, the buxom wenches, the stranger in the corner, barroom brawls, etc. We get to really see what impact the murder hobos have on the rest of the world …. but it is in NO way shoved down our throats as a morality play. This reminds me a lot of my best campaigns, where the characters interactions with the world around them had a real and noticeable impact. In this case it was a DIFFERENT set of murder hobos, long ago, that triggered these events.

This is certainly a non-traditional adventure from an OSR standpoint. It is essentially event based, but manages to not railroad the party, for the most part. It plays with common elements from D&D but doesn’t shove a message at the players. It takes places in a dream-like world where the hag is in charge, but again it doesn’t railroad the party because of it. It’s as if the party is trapped in a pocket dimension and must find out how to escape … while occasionally meeting their fellow inmates and jailers.

This is a great adventure. It’s very atmospheric and does horror right. It’s more like a haunted house adventure than a dungeon crawl, but it does haunted house right. It’s not the type of adventure (dungeoncrawls) I generally go looking for but it is of the highest quality. I don’t own/keep many printed modules but if this one was available in a print version I’d have it that way. I strongly suggest you check you check it out.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/84401/LLA002-The-Inn-of-Lost-Heroes?affiliate_id=1892600

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

The Blasphemous Brewery of Pilz!

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Dylan Hartwell
Self Published
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 3-7

Something has happened to the delicious beer of Shattenberg! None of the residents have seen the brewing monks for weeks and the tavern masters are oddly silent. Where once it was a delicious and creamy blend of mountain mushroom-based stout, it offers an oddly coppery taste and costs twice as much. For a small mining and farming town on the edge of the wilderness, this is tragedy. Now rumors have begun circulating that hideous creatures gathered to the north are somehow the cause. The players are hired to investigate, and if possible, remedy the problem.

This is a strange little adventure in an imaginative little setting. First off, this is as much a campaign setting with hooks as it is an adventure. This is a raid on the Brewery but there’s also a few other little things that can be done and hints of a nifty campaign world. The designer has loads of imagination when it comes to adventures ideas and strange things but the adventure is pretty basic. At the asking price this module is probably worth it just to raid for ideas.

The town of Shattenburg is very briefly described, in a couple of paragraphs, and has a slight WFRP feel to it: mining companies, multi-ethnic society, town institutions … this sort of reformation germany thing is totally not my style at all, but hey, whatever floats your boat. There’s a small ten entry rumor table it’s from this that the various adventures generally get their start. Something weird turned up in the dwarf silver mine … and a small eight entry description of the mine is given. The old elf sauna cave is overrun … and the three parts of the cave are described. You get the idea; small adventure seeds with a description of several attached. Unfortunately the locations, as well as the core adventure in the brewery, are all quite small; just a couple of rooms for most and about eight for the main adventure. The maps are linear and the actual encounters/room are just not that interesting.

What IS interesting though is the flavor text surrounding the various things. The nearby elves are real jerkfaces, capturing and torturing many humans. They perform weird rituals on them. Their sauna cave is full of erotic murals. It’s a nice non-traditional view of elves. The core monster for the adventure, the Burpees, looks a bit like Bullywugs but have continually churning stomachs that create large amounts of gas and are continually surrounded by a cloud of, uh … gas. When hit by a weapon there’s a 66% chance they will explode, knocking away the attackers weapon. There’s also a nice Hold Person spider in the sauna caves. There is mushroom paste beer, a Jabba the Hut halfling, and the Loknar, complete with ‘disintegrating good’ power. The whole “dragon crime lord hires Burpees to take over brewery and start another revenue stream” reminds me a lot of the Wormy comic. I LOVE this kind of Wiz-World environment.

What this amounts to is an atmospheric setting that concentrates on general guidelines rather than specific details. We are given the name of a town and several important factions but not much else. We’re given several adventure seeds with lots of surrounding fluff and atmosphere but hen few details of he adventure. In many ways it reminds me of the format of a hex-crawl but with expanded details on a couple of the hexes. The actual adventure sites, in the Burpee controlled monastery/brewery and the spider sauna/caves, don’t have that OD&D feel I’m looking for although the surrounding atmosphere certainly does. Actually, I may be wrong there. The adventures take place in recently populated areas and so the OD&D groove I’m looking for IS included, just in a different way. Pulling bricks on fireplaces, giant fossils in the wall, smells of rotting meat, etc. It’s just that the environments are too small to support a very rich experience.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/106837/The-Blasphemous-Brewery-of-Pilz–Extra-Stout-Edition?affiliate_id=1892600

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RAM1-T The Forgotten Isle

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Bryce Lynch

by Thomas J. Scott
for Magique Productions
OSRIC
Levels 4-6

Stuck in the port city of Elisarus without a job and no adventure for six months. That is, until the characters learn of a treasure map uncovered by a mysterious pirate captain, which leads to the legendary forgotten isle.

This is supposed to be a tournament module, but there is no scoring information. It’s also non-linear in a way that tournament modules seldom are and it’s not exactly clear to me how you ‘win.’ But, what makes for a terrible tournament module can make for a decent home play module … uh … I think? The module has three parts which are loosely connected. The party will get the treasure map in the town they’re in, sail to where the island is supposed to be, and then explore a ruined city.

The first portion of the adventure involves the part obtaining the map in a port town. It’s a complete mess and also of the more raucous introductions I’ve seen. The party overhears two sailors mentioning a treasure map and the desire to find more crew for the voyage. The party is expected to go sign on and check in every day until they get told the ship is pulling out. No problem, right? Well, it turns out that the party has signed on to a PIRATE ship. This good natured bunch of guys are in ‘disguise’ in port, having changed the name of their ship and their captain. One night the party stumbles upon a group of them literally running amok and spreading mayhem on some little side street. After three days the ship pulls out, but when the characters get on board they see the crew all arming themselves for a last minute raid on the town. The local guard and citizens take up arms and stop the pirates, presumably in cooperation with the party. As a reward the party is given the ship, the map, and a magic item that works the map. A glorious hook and implemented as a complete mess. There is a small map for the town with about a dozen places identified, a small random city encounter chart, a description of the ship, several seedy hangouts near the dock, a description of the pirate crew and officers, rumors charts, legends and background information, people staying at a certain inn … and absolutely no reason on earth why the party won’t just park their asses in the inn and wait for the call from the ship. Meaning, there is no reason for the party to go explore the town, no reason to talk to the NPC’s, no reason to ‘investigate.’ The module seems to make a point that the party should be making inquiries but I can’t see why the party would ever do that. So while there’s a a terrific amount of support information there’s no reason to pul it in to play. The DM is going to have to be quick on his feet to get the party moving, otherwise they are just going to go straight to the mass pirate raid. It is absolutely non-linear though.

Part two starts with the party being given the map, ship, and secret decoder ring as their reward for stopping the big pirate raid climax in part one. They did stop it, right? My players might have joined in … Anyway, the party recruits a crew and sets sail. The sailors are all chipper and in great moods and full of esprit de corps. Then, suddenly, over the next three days, they turn on the party and mutiny. Yes, these seasoned salts of the earth mutiny in three days time because the 3000 year old treasure map has a couple of issues. Three days. Really? WTF? Didn’t Columbus sail for, like, forever on the the first voyage? Didn’t some of those circumnavigators sail for YEARS at a time? And these jack-asses mutiny after three days? There are a couple of incidents in those three days, a drunk hand, a fight between two crew, that could trigger the mutiny sooner. Eventually though the mutiny happens and the crew breaks in to the armory. If the party places a guard on the armory then the sailors overcome then. WTF?!?! I’m a6th level dwarf ass kicker guarding one door and I’m taken down by a bunch of un-armed 0-levels? Of course you are, because the plot says you must be. Because during the mutiny battle the party gets to A) Discover the real location of the island, which immediately stops the mutiny, and B) gets attacked by three evil cleric ships also looking for the island. Passing through a whirlpool causes all of the parties sailors to panic and abandon ship, conveniently getting them out of the way, while also killing everyone less than 2HD. I don’t know man, I didn’t write it. But I do know that the wizards gonna be pissed about his familiar. The party sees the isle, swims over, and finds has three encounters before a showdown with the evil clerics happens, ending part two. The sailors all get their own little write-up, as does the EHP ship. The sea battle might be interesting but the module cautions several time about letting a boarding action take place because it would interfere with the plot. The EHP at the end has a soliloquy, but it’s pretty meaningless since all the party knows is that they got attacked on the seas and none of his evil backstory. It’s like the party has has a nemesis all along that they’ve been thwarting at every turn … except they are completely unaware of the guy and had no idea he existed and the thwarting was accidental. Bizarre.

Part the Third has the party exploring a ruined city on the island in search of ancient super artifacts. This amounts to four encounters in the city ruins and 17 inside the evil kings old castle built on the side if an ancient volcano. The kings castle, while composing the bulk of the encounter areas, is a little anti-climactic. There are only a handful of skeletons, a magic sword that slays undead, and an undead to be found as creature encounters. The ruins outside have an encounter with something like 12 waves of undead, but even that seems relatively light. The ancient super artifacts that are the object of the quest get no description at all. The magic vault is described as being stuffed full of them but that’s it. I would have expected more, but then again this IS supposed to be a tournament module. There is an excellent portion of this section which has a room full of magical potions, substances, etc. Most of them have some effect associated with them and there are some kindly poltergeists present to help the party fully explore the items. 🙂 I really enjoyed that room and wished there could have been more rooms like that one; weird, idiosyncratic, and full of things to play with.

While the module has some interesting ideas, such as the pirate mix-up and the waves of undead, it doesn’t really fulfill the promise of traveling to a an island from the ancient past in search of ancient artifacts. I would expect more weird stuff, things to play with, abominations, and, ultimately, some actual ancient artifacts.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/24771/The-Forgotten-Isle?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | 7 Comments