The Burning Firmament

Posted on March 30, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Dave Chenault
Troll Lord Games
Castles & Crusades
Levels 4-6

Goblins have fallen upon the town of Oorerestberg, besieging the walls and gate. And in the chaos and fear Gisella von Gripp, a druid of some renown, calls for aid in securing a wonderous books of potions. This to keep it from the goblins and others she deems unfit!

This 23 page adventure describes three scenes: a quick explore of a simple tower in a town under siege, a chase through town once the attackers are in, and then a finale in a ruined monastery outside of town. It’s the Trolls usual style, which just means info dumps of text in paragraph form with victorian inventories and perfunctory descriptions. In a 23 page adventure.

The Trolls are who they are. As is Northwind. I like to poke my head in sometimes to see what’s up; a good adventure CAN transcend publisher idiosyncrasies. But those are few and far between and remain so.

Ok, you’re in a town. It’s under siege by goblins about to break in. While running through a square someone else, running also, stops you and says she needs to grab a prayer book from that tower right there to bring to her master defending the walls. If you refuse she uses her Cloak of Charm Humanoids on you. That’s nice, eh? I don’t like it when things are that convenient. It reminds me of all of those DUngeon mystery adventure where the villain has sixteen magic items in order to prevent you from casting the first level spell you need to discover them. Anyway, you go in with her or perhaps after her when an old servant inside comes out yelling Thief! Thief! You go through some boring rooms, maybe get attacked by a pet mimic (again, ug!) and then discover shes escaped with the book. You chase her through the streets, having five encounters from a random table. The encounters have nothing to them other than “2d6 goblins” or “1d10 townfolk.” EVerything else is left up to the keeper, even though this would have been better handled by just stating out some encounters for the party to have. Why make this random? It’s not a wanderer, meant to push the party, it’s just that five of these WILL happen. Why not just describe them in a way that makes sense and brings some life to the adventure? Anyway, you come to the gate out and there COULD be a mass battle, and it COULD include some townfolk you might have picked up from the two suggested static encounters. Kind of nice there as they huddle close to the party, the kids get in the way of your feet they are so close, the men try to help and get slaughtered, the women don’t try to help and get slaughtered. No good deed, eh? Would have been nice if the townfolk had a little character. But there’s none provided, they are generic. You get outside and track her through some snow, that is now falling, to a ruined monastery nearby. Stabstab stab, the end.

Along the way we get EXTENSIVE backgrounds. Otherwise how are filling those 23 pages? The thief  gets several paragraphs of backstory. This is one: “Gisella is a worshipper of Toden, long ago disparaged in this area. She has been tasked by her superiors with coming to this area and reestablishing Toden’s influence. She has been here for a decade or more and has had little success in doing so. She has intended to leave for quite some time and now, with the city about to be slaughtered and potentially herself along with it has finally decided to leave.” Yeah, nothing there that is gameable. Wasted effort.

Our room descriptions frequently will be in Victorian inventory style. Here’s one he paragraphs hat describes the basement: “The basement contains, 3 chairs, a broken table, a brass candelabra, some sheets, a clothes rack, some pans, a pile of broken glass, an old rug, 4 lanterns and a lamp. There are 10 boxes of various sizes. Half are open and none locked. They contain sheets, cloths, winter clothes, incense burners, vials of oil, candles and candle holders, a sheaf of clean papers, dried inks, pans, rotten fruit and other assorted used or forgotten household items.” None of that is useful. None of that is important. None of that contributes to a feeling of realism. It’s just tedium. 

And our rooms generally start with some kind of backstory. Again, not in any way gameable or relevant to whats happening NOW: “This room was once used for study and prayer. When located, everything in it was piled in the center and burned or dragged outside and burned, thus very little remains. However, years ago a deeneert made his home here and left some treasure when he went off on a hunt. The demon was subsequently killed.” There’s no real formatting other than paragraph breaks and some indenting for read-aloud. Other than that, its just paragraph after paragraph of long form text for you to wade through while running the adventure.

The trolls are who they are at this point. You should know what to expect by now.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You do get a good sense of what to expect from it, so it’s a good preview.


https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/240689/castles-crusades-the-burning-firmament?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 8 Comments

The Ring of the Battle Maiden

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Ashley Warren
Self Published
5e
Level 1

A legend speaks of a lost ring that belonged to famed battle maiden Dagmar the Unyielding: traverser of the realms, feller of beasts and giants and all those who dared to stand against her. The ring, lost among the Moonshae Isles, is imbued with the power of her might. Many have sought out the ring, but few have uncovered it.  The ring is shielded by the Daughters of the Gray, a fierce and fearsome band of warriors as tough and relentless as the coastal landscape from which they were hewn. The Daughters, who reside in a Norland settlement called Kvinne, have made an oath to Dagmar, whom they revere and respect, to protect the ring at all costs. Only those the Daughters deem worthy are allowed to get close to it.  For the ring is not a piece of jewelry: it’s a place. In fact, it’s an arena.

This 23 page adventure is terrible. It has a  number of combats in a Challenge Arena. With a few more fights tossed in also. I don’t understand it at all.

I’m not sure why this is on my list. I combined several of my DriveThru wishlists recently, now that I’ve discovered that I had them, and this was on it. So someone suggested it. A bad person. I usually start reviews by trying to say something nice about an adventure. I recognize that folks generally have some emotional investment in their works and they deserve a fair shake, which includes finding some things to praise. But I’m really struggling here to find anything. 

You’re after The Ring of the Battle Maiden, which contains her power. The hooks are the usual lower effort kind. A toss-aside bar rumour or a lost page of a book. And there’s there’s the body of a troll that washes up on shore. Do trolls do that now? Not regenerate? You don’t need fire anymore? I see a stat block at the end for a Norland Troll,. That has a slightly different regen mechanism. And also has the Vicious Mockery skill? I guess this is a new troll type then and I should calm the fuck down? I don’t know. I’m down with new creatures but I think I’m taking exception to the subversion of the core mechanic of Troll. Also, when a troll DOES appear in the adventure there is little guidance on the Mockery thing. Like, none. It just seems to be another attack type. “I cast SUPERNOVA OF THE SUN!” ok, your opponent takes 1d4 damage. This would be too much in the way of removing the mechanics from the fluff for me. 

So you jump on a ship, the Maiden Voyage (get it?! Get it?!) and head to the place. AT the dock you get attacked by a harpy in a perfunctory manner. Then you’re met and told that to start your journey you need to go to the battle house over the mountain. So you hike over it, up the trail, and along the way you activate each standing stone, all CRPG style. Then you might a random undead monster at the top, which, I might note, is the improper way of using randomness. And, in fact, might stand in for a lot of the issues in this adventure. That’s not the purpose of randomness in D&D. It’s not to determine which monster you fight, in a fixed encounter that you are only having once. Yes, wanderers are a thing, but that’s to prevent your abbreviated work day shit. But, this encounter is only happening once. WHy is it random? Why not put some effort in the encounter, since its the culmination of lighting all of the beacons of Gondor. But, again, whatever.

You make it to the other side. You find the battle house. It’s stated out in all room/key style, which is inappropriate for something like this. We’re not exploring. It’s more of a social environment. A different key style is more appropriate for the assisting the DM in a case like this. Oh, also you find out that the Ring is an arena and you’re fighting tomorrow!

We go through a LONG section of read-aloud the next next morning that I am in no way paying attention to if I”m a player. And then a LONG section of rules. Which I am again ignoring because I’m bored listening to the DM and am now playing on my phone. .You go through a tournament of combat, like, five rounds or so. Worry not, if you die the priest fixes you. And between battles you can drink of the font of recovery to get your HP and abilities/spell slots back. Lucky you, death provides no escape from this adventure. 

Once you win a troll then attacks and you’re charged with killing it. If you all die then the village leader steps in, kills it immediately, and the priest cures you. It’s hard enough to die in 5e, but this takes the cake.

Did I mention the prose style in the read-aloud? When arriving at the coast there’s a long section of read-aloud that ends with: “It is a stark and bleak, but achingly beautiful, landscape. Ghostly mist swirls around you, enveloping you in its whispers — a promise that you may discover both danger and wonder here.” How’s that for purple? I can’t stand this sort of commentary. Writing is supposed to make you feel something, not TELL you how to feel. I understand it’s a bit unfair to hold an adventure writer to the standards of The Paris Review, but maybe just get a little close?

I don’t know what to say here. I know people have different styles of games. I just find it impossible to believe that any decent number of people want to sit through long read aloud. Or with that sort of prose in it. And a Test Your Might arena? There are THOUSANDS of those adventures. I can’t see why they are popular at all. Because they are easy to understand and run and require little creative effort on the DMs part? I mean, D&D has those 4e-style boardgames, right? And, with no risk at all, to the party … this is where I come closest to being wrong. I understand I want a more Game game. And that other people want more Story activities. 

But, then, why are you using D&D for that? I mean, Thou Art But A Warrior. 

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. Enough to tell what you’re getting. Or not getting, as the case may be.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/250087/the-ring-of-the-battle-maiden?1892600

I don’t know. There is just so little understanding on how to write an adventure. What good formatting looks like. Your read aloud. Structure. Evocative writing. What’s important to pay attention to, or not. And I don’t even mean the style of game. I can acknowledge that people have different play styles. But so much of the rest of it …

Posted in 5e, Reviews | 35 Comments

Grave Titan Harvest

Posted on March 25, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Joseph R. Lewis
Dungeon Age Adventures
OSR
Levels 5-8

Far below the Fields of Petrichor is a vast cavern containing the skeletal remains of a long-dead Sonorous Titan, a whale-like beast that once floated through the skies of a lost age. Amongst the bones are ravines and grottos home to bizarre creatures and lost treasures that are as beautiful and valuable as they are deadly. Ghostly shapes swim through the air. Glowing mushroom groves hide frightened creatures. And the Titan’s bones sing sadly as an ambitious wizard and his weary hirelings dig for its precious marrow..

This 29 page adventure details an underground cavern with a MASSIVE skeleton that is being mined. It’s got a decent amount going on, to explore, and is full of interactivity. Of a sort. This early Lewis design is one of his weaker offerings, lacking the verve of his later fare.

The ol villagers say that in that field nearby, haunted by ghosts, there is a hut. And in the hut an old woman, surviving amongst them. A trip by the party reveals she’s been set there to guard a teleport stone, by a wizard. But, oh yeah, he is supposed to give her this religious tome in exchange, holy to her, and he’s been dragging his feet. So, you know, maybe you can come in and she doesn’t have to kill you if you’d kindly go fetch it for her? Note the bones of this, a fetch quest done right. You’re bargaining a little more than usual and it is essentially a hook to get you to the underground cavern … that you know nothing about at that point. We also see some hints of what will become a trademark of the Lewis Style Of Things. On the way to her hut, through the ghost fields, you might be attacked by a paint of ghosts. But, also, you probably know, at this point, that there was a battle in that field between two rival gangs … and sure enough the two ghosts are in different colours. You could set them against each other, by simply pointing that out. Taking the world around you and seeing option A or B … and instead selecting hidden option C. And, then, again, the woman, if she attacks you? It is as a monk. But, also, she splits herself in thirds, all with her full stats! No explanation at all. She just does it. No magic item. She just does it. THIS is the idiosyncratic D&D I love. What’s that line from Fargo? There are no rules. 

You’re now inside a cavern a mile long and half a mile wide with a large skeleton in the middle taking up a lot of it. You’re also in a small mining camp. The wizzo in question is mining the skeleton for marrow in order to make a flying boat. Wanna help? Or kill him and take the boat? Or help him and THEN kill him to take the boat? This encounter kind of exemplifies most of the encounters in this adventure. There’s something going on and you could do something about it to help, or profit, or some combination of the two. And, maybe, even throw in that hidden option C. At one point the ghost of the skeleton whale wants to be put to rest. And you could do that. Or you could help the wizzos apprentice get the ghost in to her wand. Or, you could take hidden option C and convince the ghost to go in to YOU. Yeah magic ghost spirit inside of me giving me weird powers! The entire adventure is like this. 

And, the entire adventure, being just like this, is a little devoid of what we might call standard dungeon encounters. The only combats here are the ones you are going to explicitly be getting in to, for the most part. Just about everything can be talked to, moreso, I think, than any other adventure I’ve reviewed. Or, at least of the ones that don’t just suck because of lack of interactivity beyond simple talking. For talking here can, and frequently does, result in a combat with one or the other of the parties involved. 

And there’s a wide variety f shit going on beyond those talk to situations. Rust Monsters breeding like rabbits, of a sort. A termite mound full of beetle shells than be sold to a jeweler for 100gp. Or a spicer for 150gp. Nice variable treasure! And the magic items are almost all unique and great, well described and interesting. 

The descriptive text here, while fine, is also not quite up to the standards in later works. There’s no over reveal in read-aloud, and certainly its a far bit better than most adventure. But it’s also not quite the very high standards achieved in his later works. Similarly, the various situations encounters don’t quite have the depth of some of the later ones. I don’t think that formulaic is the right word, but it tends close enough that I considered using the word. And, also, for each encounter that seems similar there is also a goat in a goat pen, bleeting in pain, that if fucked with bursts forth with parasitic beetles. Always a good one that! Lure em in and smack em. ?Plus, there are ghost piranhas! How can you blast an adventure with ghost piranhas?! 

Thusly, a weird environment full of weird people who want weird things that you can help with and/or stab them for. I’m gonna regret this, because it’s a fine adventure. But, also, as an earlier work, it doesn’t really stand out the way the later works do. Lewis does, though, remain one of the standout designers working today and I wouldn’t hesitate to purchase any of his later adventure sight unseen.

This is $2.50 at DriveThru. The preview is fifteen pages. More than enough to get an idea of what the encounters are like. You get a real sense of the adventure from this preview. 

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/274909/grave-titan-harvest?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | Leave a comment

Beneath the Reeds

Posted on March 23, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By James S. Austin
Tacitus Publishing
OSE
Level 7

Magic offers the chance to do amazing things.  But one who practices the arts should be mindful of the proper methods to manipulate the Weave.  One such soul paid the price for his attempts to reach beyond the mortal veil, experimenting with necromancy.  His untimely death has left behind an active circle, continuing to pull upon the corruptive energies.  The lingering effects now bring great harm to those who draw too near.

This twelve page “Q-Encounter presents four ghouls and two wraiths for the party to stab, in one encounter. It is exactly what you think it would be, based on that description. 

I’m working through my wishlist! That means those of you waiting for a review of that $200 adventure, or that 600 page adventure, may begin to hope again! And, it also means I get to review things like this. Twelve pages for one encounter. One. And this isn’t even, like 4e or some nonsense, it’s OSE! That means it is essentially Basic D&D. Twelve pages! For one encounter in basic! The fucking Steading of the Hill Giant Chief was only eight!

We, of course, get a long ass background and lot of padded out pages at the start. In this edition of “Twisted Backstories” we find a necromancer who lives in a hut in the marshes, who make a permanent necrotic circle under the water and then dies. Then Two merchants get killed by bandits and thrown in the marshes … but one of them has a water fey ancestor so some fey reeds grow up around his body. This links the circle to some ley lines. This encourages four ghouls to settle nearby in a burrow and two wraiths to show up near/at the circle that is like twenty feet away. There’s a lot more detail than this. That is all useless. But, in typical Bad Adventure fashion the adventure goes on and on to justify the nonsense it is about. Just present it! Maybe a sentence if you need to, but just do it! It’s fucking D&D man, we’re not explaining quantum theory here.

The hooks are lame. Well, some of them. At level seven you get to go find a missing farmer. I got better things to do at level seven. There are, however, two that are more interesting. I might even call them rumours, or, perhaps, an interesting way of doing rumours that are presented as hooks here. Two fisherman, in the bar, talking about how they heard a crying baby in the reeds, paddling over they met a foul stench from the reeds and hurried off. Kind of nice. Lowkey. And, another that has weeping and moaning being heard and dark figures running amongst the trees. No travels after night anymore … I like the superstition leanings of these two. Creepy. But, yeah, “the local druid says the marsh has darkness in it …” Bleach.

Welcome to the adventure! You get four descriptions, of four different places, all up front, one after another, in long italics read-aloud. Hard to read. Then the read-aloud over-reveals details of the location. Or, to quote part of one “Bunched piles of bones and rotting flesh lay about with two recent kills, a male and female human, in the center—bite and claw marks showing a violent end for both.” It starts strong, yeah? Nicely visceral. And then we get to the male and female and bite and claw stuff, which is too much detail for a quick room scan. And then we get a little “the novelisation of the game” with the Showing A Violent End garbage. 

Ok, so, you got four sections of read-aloud, all in a row and then some tactics, day and night, for the four ghouls and two wraiths. Then you find out they have 257gp of treasure, meaning that the designer has absolutely no idea how OSE works. Joy. It’s just a conversion hack job. 5E, PF1, PF2 and OSE. Fuuuuuuck You! 

That $200 600 page adventure is looking a lot better right now … I know, this is my own fault. But, really, Tacitus? Just goes to show you …

This is $1 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Otherwise you wouldn’t buy it, yeah?

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/473353/beneath-the-reeds-ose?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 9 Comments

The Buried Convent of the Headless Saint

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
Eon Fontes-May
YouCanBreatheNow Games
OSR
Level 1

Buried ‘neath a forgotten landslide, deep under the foothills, is a ruined cloister with a secret. Long ago, nestled into the mountain there, it is said that a true saint lived and died. The pious woman never spoke a single untruth from the moment she drew breath, and the gods blessed her to continue speaking truth afterward. Old folks whisper that the Healdess Saint is still enthroned down there in her lightless cathedral. They say that if you bring her a skull then it can be made to answer questions, truthfully, from beyond the grave.

This seven page adventure uses two pages to describe about 23 rooms in a buried nunnery. There are a lot of interesting ideas in this, but, also, it lacks descriptive thrust and, perhaps, is a little low on interactivity beyond some basics. But the ideas here, the basic concepts and some of how they are implemented, are quite intriguing!

We’ve got this convent. It’s buried, they say. They also say that if you take a skull to it then you can make it answer questions. SWEET! I love that kind of oracular shit as an adventure hook. There’s so many command words and things to know in D&D, and why not exploit the mythos with some ripping of knowledge from the beyond? 

Approaching, you see just the top of a tower, nothing more. Cause it’s buried, duh. Although, a short distance away you can find some exposed roof tiles … thus you have two ways of breaking in, both of which could involve some crowbar action. I approve! There’s a three floor tower, buried, along with a flourish floor connected building (the roof tiles, duh.) And, thus, the convent. The map supporting this is a charming little affair, with little bits of drawing and notes on it to help the DM run it. Monsters and major room features are noted, along with a note or two like “rotting floor” or “bodies” next to a pile of little bodies. There’s a few ways up and down between levels also, and a few hard to get to places because of that. This is a great fucking map, in all respects, especially for a smallish 23 room dungeon. The notations and illustrations help run the place and the map complexity contributes to an exploratory vibe. Quite nice.

And then we’ve got this starving nun, who goes cannibal, and thusly turns in to a ghoul. And her fellow sisters take down doors and such to build a barricade to keep their fellow away. Pretty sweet! As well as the bodies intertwined who took poison. (Second time in a short while in my reviews for that one, eh?) 

Steal some of those gold candelabras and holy symbols from the dead bodies and really go after looting those religions items. (WHat are those called? Not relics? Just the normal religions shit you’d find in a church?) Anyway, stuff em in the loot bag. And, there are some decent non-book items. LIke a skull to carry around, or a warhammer in a stylized skull. Or an actual skull used as a mace. Hmm, lots of skull theming here. 😉 Anyway, nice little bits and bots here and there, both in the mundane treasure and the magical, and mixed in to some more generic items of both types. I like the extra effort, I just wish there were more.

My major problem is two fold: the descriptions and the interactivity. There is a general “always on” description note at the top of the encounters page, and since it’s only two pages long, it does help a bit with atmosphere. But this is generally to the exclusion of much other in the way of a room description. And, the interactivity is a little lacking as well. But, the monsters descriptions are all generally on a monster reference sheet. So what is the room description doing? That’s a great question. One room tells us that “The dormitory staircase hides a secret tunnel that the abbess used to sneak around and snoop on the young women in the convent.” Ok, so, thats very nice, but also, it’s backstory and not really relevant. It’s SUPER interesting though. It goes on “It’s very hard to spot, but a hinged panel leads to a cramped passage filled with spiderwebs and insects.” Ok, so, now we’re cooking! Cramped, spiderwebs, insects. Got it! Hinged panel is great. Hard to spot is not useful, if a secret passage; the default is hard to spot. Then “The tunnel remained mostly sealed and is disgusting but harmless.” Again, another pretty useless sentence. It’s backstory. It’s justification. “It continues for 150ft until a trapdoor in the ceiling that leads to the rectory. Area 18)” I’m not getting the disgusting part of this. Cramped, spiderwebs, ok. Cramped is good but spiderwebs and insects could use some beefing up. The hiinged panel is great. The rest is … meh. Maybe keep on or two concepts here, but you need to work them in differently. They can’t be the main focus, and they are in this description. We need more about the webs and insects. 

And this is not an isolated room. A great many of them are like this. It is integrating shit like that well, to create an interesting product TO READ … but we’re here to play. And the descriptions tend to not be focused on that. “The storage basement was accessible only by a hidden trapdoor, but now lies exposed by the hole left behind when a derrogar fell from the ladder.” Again, I could live my life forever without the first clause, but the second is decent. It needs more of that, with better descriptive use of adjectives and adverbs to bring the environment to life. To this end, the interactivity is all modeled after stabbing things. There’s some interesting lead ino, or follow through, from stabbing things. But it’s mostly just stabbing things. A potential rats nest of treasure, literally, telegraphs a rat attack. That’s great! But, also, a puzzle with the solution of “tell the skull seven secrets” that you learn the answer to in another room, while decent in concept, is not enough to carry an entire adventure.

So, again, a GREAT deal of promise here. The room descriptions need strong edits to retain their charm and add an evocative environment. And the interactivity could be more varied, especially given the exploratory nature. I’m a little perturbed by a couple of padding pages that add nothing much, but I’d get over it if the room descriptions were a little better. These little things are, I think, showing some interesting promise, they just more hard work on the core of it: the room descriptions and interactivity. I could be generous with a No Regerts here, but I’m not going to be.

This is $4 at DriveThru. You get three pages of preview, including the map page. A page of descriptions would have been good. 

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/471619/the-buried-convent-of-the-headless-saint?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 6 Comments

The Palace of Evendur

Posted on March 18, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Tom Garner
Crawler Solo
B/X
Levels 1-3

Your party is approached by a local storyteller who spins a tale about the empty and overgrown Palace of Evendur, once home to a powerful planar travelling wizard, who went missing more than a life-time ago. The players must unravel the mystery of the palace, erected at the edge of a strange and enchanted forest…

This thirteen page adventure uses four pages to detail a small “palace” with ten rooms. It does everything wrong. But, also, it does it wrong is a kind of classical way. You know, the way some kind-hearted but well meaning person might. But it’s still wrong. And unusable.

A five paragraph long read-aloud starts off our hook, with a bard dude offering you 30gp to go look at this disappeared wizards home and solve the great mystery: why did the wizzo build his “palace” on the edge of the woods? Not what I’d call a great mystery, but whatever. After many pages of worthless padding later, we get to room one.

And are confronted again by a long section of read-aloud. This is the norm for this adventure. You need to wade through it. It says things like “You are standing before …” or “You are in a large throne room …” Rom after room. And then sentence after sentence after that. “Upon the throne appears to be …” Every read-aloud makes an appearance. Too long. Using boring descriptive wors like large. Things APPEAR to be. Over-revealing details of the room. As well as the perspective thing. 

Then comes the stat blocks. A full on stat block, inline with the text, in full MM glory. Including Treasure Type and description. This gets in the way, actively, of trying to understand the text of the room in order to run it. At one point I think I waded through a page and half of text, only to find out that there was a notable chandelier in the room, in the next to last paragraph. Well, fuck. And it’s important. And it’s not in the read-aloud. Well fuck me. This is a textbook example of why that kind of shit should not be done. 

You’re looking for a key, it turns out, so you can get in to the garden room on the half moon. No real clue that’s what you need to do, but that’s what you need to do. When you kill the armor in room two (4HD, surrounded by a bunch of 2HD flying swords. And a 4HD murder rug. At level one …) it drops the key. 

After slogging through room after room of things artistically saying “what’s the password?” then you meet a kindly dryad in the garden who tells you her tragic tale, and then returns to her tree. But, wait, the missing wizzo planned for this! The tree dies! She’s now driven insane! Kill her! Yes, this is the way of this adventure. Play by fiat. And not the good kind of philosopher-king. The bad kind.

Let’s see. It has almost no monetary treasure. At all. But, you do get three wishes, as a party, when you go in! You don’t know it, but you do. Also, all three good types of crystal balls are stuffed up a chimney in one of the rooms. Three of them. In fact, the whole place is littered with magic items. And maybe … 500gp of mundane treasure? Until you kill the dryad. She has “treasure type D” buried under her tree.

Why? Why would you do this? Why would not just roll the treasure and put it here? Why tell us it’s D? You put fucking treasure in to every other room. Why would you not put it in to that room also? The main room? 

This is fully representative of The Bad Old Days. When T$R shoved things down our throats. When the interactivity in an adventure was strained. It’s weird, both this and the previous review were, I think, straining the boundaries of kiddy D&D, that slur that folks used to described BASIC to differentiate it from their 1e master. It’s the full on Eliminster “Heel!” thing. Neither adventure go fully there, but they are getting really close to it. It’s not the whimsy and wonder of an OD&D game, but a writing and orientation to a simplistic interactivity. Not in just stabbing. But in blatant passwords and find the blue key syndrome. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1.30. The preview is six pages. You get to see some of the padded intro and the first room, as well as part f the second. That should be enough to tell you what you are signing up for. 

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/470618/the-palace-of-evendur-basic-adventure-module?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 3 Comments

Duirdun Vale

Posted on March 16, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Mark Kerruish
Imagination Underway
OSR
Level 1

“Look here,” says the dragon. “I know you must be a bit feeble of mind not to run and hide from a hunting red dragon. My condolences on your thick-wittedness. Take my advice and run next time.”

This 24 page adventure presents six encounters, linear, on an overland journey between a village and a city. This is no whimsy or wonder. It is boring dreck with too much read-aloud and nothing going on.

How bad is this? It’s is close to being Eliminster ‘Heal!’ bad. At one point “Later that day, lake gulls from Lake Mimrise fly low over the party and drop a bar of soap for each person present.” Uh huh. Cause if you’re a stinky person and try to get in to the city then the guards look weird at you. That’s the final encounter. In the adventure. Of the six encounters that’s the final one. The gulls dropping soap (“there’s a nearby stream” the adventure tells us) and then the gate guards sniffing the party and telling them the Earl doesn’t like stinky people and the city is very clean. That’s where the adventure ends.

Oh, fuck, right. That doesn’t make sense. You see, this is an ESCORT mission. You’re escorting a young monk from the village to the city. I know, I know, escort mission. But, no, not like that. He’s not going to be in danger. Instead he’s going to silently judge you and you’ll get less reward, I guess, when you get to the monastery in the city. You’re never TOLD this. You’re only told you’ll get paid by the monks in the city when you arrive. I guess you have to intuit that the dude is going to rat out your misdeeds. Or, whatever he thinks are misdeeds. So, you get to the city gates and you’re not paid. The adventure just ends. There is no payment. No monastery. I guess that’s the next adventure? 

So, six linear encounters on the road. The entire thing is very 5e in its layout and art style and so on. No doubt this is from a template. The art is AI, but I don’t really give a fuck, except to say I hate it. In fact, I think I hate absolutely everything about this adventure. 

I hate the long and pointless read-aloud sections. These are SUPER common and SUPER long. Her’es just a portion of one, one paragraph from among many when starting the adventure “It’s a grey, dreary morning with a chill drizzle. Liss, the innkeeper’s help, brings you a hearty breakfast of sausages, bread, and gravy. She glances out the window as she puts the plates in front of you. “Unseasonal, ” Liss comments. “Looks like we’re in for an early autumn.” She walks away to let you get stuck into your breakfast. You’ll need all the energy you can get if the road turns muddy.” I hope Liss dies. Truly. Isn’t this the way of it? You, someone engaged and interested in the world around them. Full of joy and wonder for the new day ahead. Ain’t nothing gonna break my stride, ain’t nothing gonna slow me down! Then Lizz appears. With his drivel. The mundane pointlessness. Prosaic. Liss deserves all of the abuses of the mundanity of the world … I’m going down in a hole in the ground. Oh, also, this read-aloud is pointless. You get it, it’s the novelization of the adventure rather than the adventure proper. 

We get, like, 2.5 pages of wandering monsters for day and night. For when you go off the road in to the forest or some such. But you never do. You stay on the road. It’s like throwing in the deep ocean encounter tables. 

So, escort mission, right? First encounter: a bridge over a mud puddle has collapsed and a horse is sinking in to the mud while some men watch, with their wagon. It’s exactly what it sounds like, nothing more. It takes, like, 2.5 pages for the designer to tell us all about it. Encounter two: Frank the goblin is looking for some dude named Bob. Oh, also, do you  want to gamble? You can say No, it’s ok. That’s another page and a half. Then you meet some … hmmm … stereotypical eastern european travelers known for reading fortunes. Not Rromani. Those are real people. The designer is using the other word, which polite society no longer uses. Anyway, a page and a half for a fortune reading that uses a nicer version of the Deck of Many Things. Then you find a scroll on the road and a wizard in the next town who confronts you for stealing it. Another two pages for this, but, interesting: “If the party killed anyone, a gallows is constructed in front of them while they are in the stocks. They are executed as murderers the next day” Well now, that took a turn! Just like guessing what action the monk wants you to take, you get to guess what action gets you hung! But, also, fuck me man, nice one! I mean, you’re coming at it from an overly moralizing position, but I like the brutality of it. Some fuck around and find out shit right there! But, also, we telegraph shit like this, or should anyway. It’s only fair to the party when you change the rules or game world in a major way. Let’s see, then we’re taking a couple of pages to maybe fight some ogres. Then you meet a red dragon, which is actually a gold dragon in disguise. That’s it. You can do the entire thing without combat. Ignore the mud thing and walk around it. DOn’t talk/gamble with the goblin. Ignore the travelers. Ignore the two wrestling ogre teens. Talk to the dragon/polied dude. Take a bath with the soap. Adventure over.

23 pages for a couple of wilderness encounters. In becmi. IN BECMI!!!With nothing really going on. Just stand there and let the world roll by. Because there’s no treasure. After defeating four ogres, in their lair, you get about 260gp in loot. You fucking enjoy that new fucking level. Then again, it’s six do nothing encounters, why should you level for that, or get even close? 

I have no idea what this thing is and I have no idea why it exists and I have no idea how one could write something like this. 

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages and shows you all of that wonderful town/hook read-aloud with the sausages and gravy, as well as part of the wandering tables, which you won’t be using. Bad preview.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/471169/duirdun-vale?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 2 Comments

Tales of the Wolfguard

Posted on March 13, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Andrea Tupac Mollica
Hellwinter Forge of Wonders
OSE
Level ... 3?

Blizzard Vale is the northernmost province of the Empire, conquered with great endeavours centuries ago. It’s a frozen, hostile land with sparse patches of conifers, icy rivers, and lakes. The Wolfguard, an old garrison of soldiers and scouts, watches over the vale and protects the town of Ysvindur from the barbarian Elves and more sinister threats.

This is a 56 page regional setting with a couple of places to explore. It’s the boring land of boringness. Except this time it’s got a light veneer of winter.

So, there’s a regional setting and then there’s a regional setting. One has a little sanbody area that you can explore, with a home base, some hooks to get you going and sites to explore and so on. The other is a fluff piece. Maybe more of a gazetteer. This is not the sandboxy thing I thought it to be, from the blurb. I can get behind reviewing a regional setting. But, fluff? I don’t know. When’s the last time I made the analogy of getting inspired by the morning constitutional? 

The analogy is not far off. We’ve got a little valley. We’ve got a little town in the valley. The valley is a valley and the town is a boring little town. Typical town descriptions. Elk jerky and icicle mint tea at the bar. The usual townfolk descriptions. The only notable things are a ice statue in the main temple and an assassins guild in town. THAT comes with a little table to spice up life. Drugging wells, killing folk and so on Drop in a random roll to spice up the game, it says, and I agree. It’s BY FAR the best thing about the town or the vale. Otherwise this is a generic outskirts town, but with a winter theme. You’re The Wolfguards! Lairing at Wolfs Den, your base in the valley, with the town nearby. What you’re guarding against I have no idea. There are also some elf barbarian tribes nearby, but they don’t really get much to them, in spite of having a decent word and page count. And such it is; it’s mostly fluff with very little actionable data. Bird people live in the mountains. Great. I’m bored. There have got to be a half dozen better supplements for a town to run from. Fuck me, Pembrocktonshire is better and it’s just a list of weirdos in a town. I loathe the focus on the mundane. “Your dour eyes hold the echoes of grief and regret, and your footsteps resonate with the determination to leave behind the darkness that clings to you.” *bleech* That’s the little intro text we get to inspire the DM. 

Oh, you do get a little table on how to spend XP to upgrade your Wolfs Lair tower. It’s kind of a cute idea. Spend some XP and find something hidden or some such, or get some other bonus. It’s a cute little upgrade thing. 

Ok, so, we’ve got some dungeon and an explicit adventur ein this thing also. Seven dungeons. Each one about a half page. It’s a map, a half page map, with some text bubbles pointing to an area and saying something like “Nest of a rust monster’ or “Amber golem guarding the libraries entrance.” That;’s the extent of them. You enjoy that.

The actual adventure is just a little better. You’re out riding, on the way to your first assignment … the Wolfs Den! Lair. Whatever. Oh no! You see some elf barbarians with wolf helmets fighting some elf barbarians with Eagle helmets! What do you do? That’s scene one, a fight. Scene two is an elf come running up after the fight and saying “your supply wagon was taken its your problem now,.” Ok. Scene three is a little six room dungeon over three pages. You’re in a cave. You have to roll, when in the same room as a campfire, to detect the campfire smoke. That don’t make sense, right? According to the little map (which looks like a little Dyson cave map) the room can’t be more than 20 feet wide? Except the room keys seem to to use a one square equal seven feet scale. Then, I turned to a different map, a full page map of the same cave, included in the appendix. Seven feet? No. Five or ten feet? No. The scale is one square equals five hundred yards!!! Well, that was unexpected. And not present on the map at all that is inline with the text. Huh. Still, “footprints go east” to nowhere. I think the designer meant south. It’s weird, that’s the second time they made this mistake, I think. In another mini-dungeon they have a text bubble that says something like You hear sounds from the east … where the east is a cave wall. The hallway runs north and west. Dude did, I think, confuse themself … they use some non-traditional “up is not north” compass. Like, North is to the Southeast on one map. Why the fuck would you do that?

The adventure and mini-dungeons are not value adds. The regional setting is not interesting, from a dynamic gameplay standpoint, except for the assassin table. This is not a place to explore. 

This is $3 at DriveThru. There is no preview. There are, however, seventeen five star ratings. *sigh* What can men do against such reckless hate?

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/471450/tales-of-the-wolfguard?1892600

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Hiss

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Idle Cartulary
Self Published
Cairn

A falling star. Neighbors changed. People missing. Something is amiss in Plum Oleander, and you must uncover the mystery to survive.

This thirty page digest adventure is a muddled mess. It wants to be a subtle power play in a village. It is, though, just a big list of things and ideas.

The designer is trying to a kind of Cult of the Reptile God thing here. At least that’s what they state. You know, snake parasite things slithering inside of people and taking them over and all of that jazz. Complicating things is that the reptile cult, centered around a crashed meteor, landed in a church and the church’s catacombs are coming t life to avenge the sacralidge. So, faction three (normal villagers, cult) is the skeleton avengers of the church. Finally, the kids of the villager are not impacted so they have an alliance with the mole men, who are also subjected by the cult, and are waging a stealth war. This could be pretty cool!

But it’s not.

This is mostly just a long list of things. A long list of places in the village. A long list of entries for some of the buildings (Note that I am not calling these keys.) A long list of people. A long list of treasure that the dm COULD place. And, sometimes, one of the entries in the list has something relevant to the adventure. “Two snakelet-folk. Tossing knucklebones; learning how to have fun” Now see, that’s great! They’ve been taken over and trying to learn how to fit in, all Resident Alien style. Absolutely! 

But what we don’t get is any of that in the village proper. These things are reserved for the four keyed locations. In the village we get a mundane description of a village farmhouse and who lives there and not much else. And those entries are NOT short. They are, in a way charming, in the way that a series booklet might be charming for a series. “Aragon, also called Strider, is the lost heir in hiding.” Well, ok, sure. But it doesn’t really bring us down to earth in a way that is going to drive the adventure forward. We’re looking for the Bree thing, the taproom such. 

Instead what we get is something like this: “Talmage Rawbone, snakeletfolk. Joke-killing, barrel-shaped sheriff. My dreams were all of anger and frustration, always wanting to use my

fists but never submitting. I am free, now” Ok, sure buddy. Or something like “Adult Children. Peace, Raggedy falcon. Sherlock, Ghost drinking a cocktail. Revolution, Thistle, always with an angle.” Hints of a system resource, not well implemented, with form followed but function lost. I don’t know what the fuck I am supposed to do with that shit. I can’t even grok what it’s trying to tell me, as in  what’s the verbs and what’s the nouns. 

The “keys” to the four main sites are exactly the opposite. We’ve got that learning to play knucklebones entry. Or “God-snake idol and kneeling cushions. Coins on the altar. “ or “God-snake idol and kneeling cushions. Coins on the altar. “ Very minimally described. Not exactly evocative. Rather than those giant long entrie the villagers and buildings get, these encounter keys are essentially one liners. And while I’m down for the snake cult members sleeping coiled up on the floor, like snakes, I’m gonna need just a tad more. “Major treasury – Plentiful gold and jewellery for the God-clothier.” just ain’t gonna cut it.

There’s no action here. I’d argue there’s not even any potential energy, in spite of a little war timeline mechanism thing. There’s just a list of people and their allegiances, poorly organized by building, and then nothing to really drive the action. No inciting event. No plots or plans. Thisis the real sin of this adventure. 

And it’s got all the usual shitty hooks. Your mom and dad are incommunicado. A mentor. Caravan guards. Just every bad trope, badly trope. And nonsensical writing, such as “Deeper still, bogguts in Dorp, subdued by the cult, quietly seek allies for their resistance.” Uh, so. Ok. Dorp is a place, I guess? And bogguts are people? 

Finally, let us look at the DriveThru blurb: “”Legitimately creating the lexicon for what I look for in good adventures” – Sandro, creator of Steel Hearts.” Uh. Ok. here’s more of people being overly dramatically nice about this thing. The kind of stuff that makes me immediately suspicious. 

Decent magic items here. Decent window dressing with the learning to be human and sleeping coiled up things and such. But it is, I think, just a village description. And no real timeline or events. 

It’s just not focused around running it, as an adventure. And I don’t mean room/key format. That may be appropriate for some elements of this, but the core element of the gameplay, the secret war and people and plots and such, no. It’s just not organized around THAT type of gameplay.

This is $21 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You can kind of get an idea of what the thing is like from it. Just imagine more of the same, about everything except the keys. 

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/470904/hiss-cairn-edition?1892600

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Underneath the Ruined Watchtower of some Forgotten Duke

Posted on March 9, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Eon Fontes-May
YouCanBreatheNow Games
OSR
Levels 1-2

People here just call it ‘the old watchtower.’ To the shepherds and merchants who pass by, it’s nothing more than a landmark. Young lovers sneak away to carve their names on the weathered stone walls. Among the locals, the structure is widely believed to have been the military outpost of some forgotten duke. It was not. Hidden beneath the ruined watchtower is a dark relic from a forgotten age.

This seven page digest adventure uses two pages to describe a watchtower & basement with about twenty rooms. There’s some interesting moments here, more so than usual, but fails t convey a sense of the environment. Maybe next time.

Brycy Bryce likes a short, in terms of page count, adventure. That should be clear by now. Ye Olde G1 kicks some ass. But people just loooooove to stick some fucking backstory in to their room descriptions. They fucking love to pad out entries with filler words.  Let us rejoice in overly describing the mechanics involved in a situation, to the point of exhaustion. FIll those first pages with your fiction, backstory, and a town that is in no way interesting. FIll the rear with pregens, and appendix after appendix. 

Or, you can work the fucking room description. Work it till you fucking hate it. And second, fourth, and fifth draft and disgust every time you look at the wonder you are trying to convey. For us, the descendents of O’Shaughnessy. I want to believe! But not too today, you strange enchanted boy.

This adventure is seven digest pages. The watchtower has 21 rooms, including a couple of areas outside. There are three pages of padding, with some repetition of information. The actual room descriptions take about a page and a half, plus a page for the map. There was room here, in those seven pages, to do something interesting and good. A promise, unfulfilled. The background information tells us little to add to the adventure. It does not add to hooks or situations to get the party mixed up in. It is just generic backstory and the like that adds to a rich tapestry of history, that will never see use at the table. It’s not like I’m going to get pissed if we get a little bit oft this in an adventure, or a throw off sentence or two in a room description. But when the focus of the adventure seems to be on this aspect of the writing, when the actual keys suffer, then I must suggest that focus has been lost.l You should have been working those keys instead of fucking about with the fluff. But, first,an intermission …

The thing does a decent job with some ideas. It grasps a interesting situation and dumps them in fairly frequently. There is, for example, a hastily dug and shallow grave outside of the watcher. With a body in it. That has been gnawed upon. One of the halfling bandits from inside who opened the wrong door and got disemboweled by zombies. That’s great! Not the backstory, necessarily, but the clue. It amps the players up, It provides clues as to what is going on inside. It causes questions and gives apprehension. Great little fucking encounter. All from “Recently dug gravesite for [a bandit] half-devoured by a zombie.” The element of grounding, here, that his provides, bringing home the realism and the viscerarealness that comes along with it, without falling in to the trap of “realism.” You know the word. The word I won’t use. But, yeah, that’s the magic word.

Which is not to say that the adventure does it to an overwhelming degree, but when it does, it’s hitting hard and it’s a major strength. It also explicitly provides a vibe check, up front, before the keys starts. In a little shaded box we get a vibe for the upper tower and the tower basement. Weathered stone, lovers graffiti, hateful graffiti, old campsites and scattered debris and filth. And for the lower tower, a large rat twitching with paralysis, a bloody handprint of a halfling, stacks of brittle paperwork. Nicely done little “always on” details to help the DM set the mood room after room. A zombie with a carcass crawler eating entwined, gnawing on his innards. A halfling along and crying in his room, drinking to forget his sorrows, or curled up fetally in the courtyard vomiting from the booze. The air smelling of sulfur, brimstone and smoke in a room, foreshadowing another room, nearby. Noice.

But these little situations are few, and not enough to carry the adventure. And for each one of these we get “Crashing sounds can be heard from inside this medical center its in disarray.” That’s your descriptions. Oh, there more, there’s four more sentences. But the description, proper, of the environment, is no more. Or, a ruined wagon outside thee tower, hit by the bandits. With the padded out “An unlucky victim of the  bandits” and then “There’s a unique crest on the wagon, someone might care to know about this ..?” And you, the designer, might want to provide three extra words instead of that description to really hook up the DM and get their juices going. I get what you were trying to do, and am VERY supportive, but you need to do it with specificity, not with ambiguity. Anyway, the adventure loves to give us room descriptions that are not. The Commanders office hung with outdated maps. Hastily barricaded steps. A wide set of stairs, descending. They just needed another few words, or sentence, to turn them from the sparseness of an almost minimal description in to a terse worded and evocative environment that makes the imagination run wild.

Work those key description.

This is $4 at DriveThru.The preview shows you the first three pages, of backstory and shit, but none of the keys. It should have shows a few keys, because the preview wis not good for its intended purpose, getting a sense of the adventure you are about considering purchasing.


https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/471622/underneath-the-ruined-watchtower-of-some-forgotten-duke?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 1 Comment