tenfootpole.org

By Ken Taylor
Ripped Tabard Adventures
Castles & Crusades
Levels 3-5

The autumn wind whispers through the corn, carrying the sound of crows and the rustle of straw. Somewhere in the fields, justice denied walks on legs of wood, seeking those who wronged him. Will your party bring peace to a restless spirit, or simply add more blood to the harvest soil?

This 25 page adventures presents a vengeful scarecrow taking out its revenge on a farming family. It wants to be a drawn off eerie affair, and tries to provide some advice in doing so. It also lacks meaningful specificity to help bring it to life in a way that is other than combats.

Fifty years ago an innocent man was executed for theft. His body was stuffed in a scarecrow to make an example of him by the local bigwig farm family who he supposedly wronged. Oops, he didn’t do it. A lightning strike all these years later has caused his spirit to animate the scarecrow, which is now killing folk in the same family.  Oopsie. 

The adventure here is doing something interesting with its organization. It wants to be a little open-ended sandboxy like thing and is organizing itself to help promote that. We get the basic set up and then a list of key NPCs and what they know, and a few others to add some color. We’ve got sections on how to run the scarehow, creating atmosphere, pacing, and so on. And, of course a whole lot of focus on the combat encounters and the scarecrows hit and run tactics, etc.

I can absolutely see how this thing is supposed to be run. Wander in, talk to people, see the tension in the air, set up a couple of glimpses, build some tension, find out more information, hun it down and/or deal with it in a way other than hacking it by putting it to rest, etc. And, some of the advice is decent. The scarecrow can set fires in a distant field to create a distraction while it circles around behind to try and get someone, or the advice to try and build sympathy for the wrongly executed man. And it’s all generally laid out in a decent manner, with bullets highlighting information for easy scanning and so on. I might take a little exception to some of the “people” information being scattered a little more than I would like, with motivations and timeline information not all being in the same place for a person. The single column doesn’t help with density issues and there is also a distinct lack of “other NPCs” beyond the main players. It would have been nice to have a few more just to fill in a bit when needed, a name, a quirk, a vignette, something like that to help support the DM through what is recommended to be three sessions of play. (12 hours?! For this?!) 

Where the adventure falls down is in its specificity. I’m going to grossly exaggerate here, but, “make it spooky!” is not specific. There is a decent amount of general information here, which could be tightened up by combining some NPC information, etc. There is a general flow, and general advice on what the designer intends to happen. I think you can understand the vibe the designer is going for, they outline it several times. And there is some very general advice on how to create that vibe. For example, “build sympathy for [wrongly executed dude].” Well, ok yes. That is going to add some depth to this otherwise pretty straightforward adventure and may even lead the party to put him to rest from a position of sympathy and empathy rather than from solving a killer scarecrow/hack problem. But HOW do you do that? Given that the farm family is reluctant to expose their past deeds and the family secret, what to do what to do? A few words leading us down that path would be good. It does hit in places, like that whole advice to start fires as a distraction and so on. It’s just a few words like “it will cause distractions [starting a fire in a distant field, making animal noises]” And this is great. I think you can riff on a nighttime scene from that, the chaos and so on, in saving things from a fire. (Which, again would help with a few more supporting characters) But MOST of the adventure doesn’t really have that degree of specificity. I’m going to use the words “lacking in vignettes”, but I don’t think you even need to go to that extreme, of a full blown vignette. Just a few more tips to emphasize certain points, themes, actions and the like, as the party adventures and the DM strives to fill in twelve hours of play time. 

Another example here is the AFTERMATH section. We have a couple of notes, based on the outcome, of the prominent farm family having a tarnished reputation or suffering from some setbacks, in about as many words. This lacks somewhat the gravitas that more specificity would bring to the outcomes and really bring home the weight of the proceedings.

There are hints in that screenshot of some decent things. The harvest setting portion in particular, although, again, this is mostly generalizations. It’s more advice than the grounded things that a DM could riff on to make an adventure really comes to life and hit home. This is not, by any means, a throw away adventure, though it tackles the trope of a vengeful autumn scarecrow. Anyone who has heard the wind wistling through dry corn can imagine the eerie vibes it brings, but if you’ve not then you’re going to struggle to bring that to life.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is the first five pages. Given the unconventional nature of the organization, which I’m intrigued by the possibilities of in a sandboxy way, I’m struggling to imagine a better preview, but a better preview IS needed.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/541684/scarecrow-s-revenge?1892600

By Richard Davis
Explorer's Guild Publishing
OSR
Level 5

A Fallen Star. A Hidden Power. A Town on the Brink. When a blazing light crashes into the hills near a sleepy barony, mysterious events begin to occur. Animals, and even some people, are driven mad. Adventurers arriving in the region soon find themselves drawn into a dangerous mission that will draw them into the deadly crystaline depths of the earth.

This twelve page adventure uses about three pages to describe four rooms underground with a couple of mutated animals. Almost certainly a 5e conversion, it weirdly spends a lot of time in the lead up to the star-shard cave. An aimless series of mechanistic die rolls and skill checks with little glee in it. 

You get attacked by a couple of weird wolves in the forest. Then you run across some mercs hunting them and they tell you Baron Fuckwit is hiring people to track down and stop these weird animals. Going to him you learn of a meteor crater and how dude sent two guardsmen to look in to it, with only one returning guy. You get to talk to guy. On the way to the crater you maybe have a challenge. THen you get to the crater and explore up tp four rooms, rolling dice to overcoming challenges and then eventually fighting a 6HD bear. You won. Congrats. Ain’t no treasure, but Baron Fuckwith might give you up to 1800gp. Which sounds great for a group of level fives as a reward. In 5e. 

Yeah. No loot. Lots of skill challenge/attribute check shit. “Causes 1d4 radiant damage.” Uh huh. Conversion, yeah? Which doesn’t have to be bad but nearly almost always is. Hmm, or maybe nearly every adventure is bad anyway and therefore nearly every conversion is? Either way, it’s clearly not localized for the OSR. Which means it’s a fucking money grab.  And, therefore Fuuuuuuck You!

Beyond the money grab aspect of a poor conversion, with it’s emphasis on die roll checks, I find the degree of lead in here quite unusual. The initial “hook” is a combat; you’re attacked by mutant wolves which leads to the merc showing up and telling you about the baron and his efforts/hiring./job offer. THis take at least a page to go over. And then the meeting with the baron and some follow ups, with the surviving guardsman and the home of the dead guardsmen perhaps. In another adventure I might look favorably on this. Supporting the DM, adding some flavour, etc. But in this the page count is off. There might be about five pages of this kind of lead in/.side trek stuff and then just a couple of pages for the adventure site. There is,certainly room for this sort of thing in an adventure. Investigation/bad guy lair, that sort of thing. 

And the trip to the meteor site. There are four possible encounters possible, presented on a die roll table. This makes no sense. None of them really matter. In one you can find some game trails as a shortcut, if you have tea with a gnome. But there’s no urgency getting to the crater or the return. It’s just flavour. You need a reason to NEED a shortcut, or the shortcut is just the same as “the wind blows from the east now”; there’s nothing behind it. It’s just trivia. 

It’s also hitting a pet peeve of mine, the use of the word “turn.” A decent example is “The water is the main vector of the curse, and if the party touches it, they suffer 1d4 damage per turn.” Every ten minutes? Round? Segment? Ten minutes seems off to me? 

Everything here points to a very low effort conversion. But, beyond that, even as a 5e adventure, this seems like a throw-away. A disproportionate amount of adventure before the adventuring site. A mediocre hook. An overland journey that is pretty meaningless and should have been been handled as a static encounter that contributed to the adventure instead of just “I need a skill check” encounter. And then the disappointment of the adventuring site proper. A couple of challenges and then a fight with a mutant bear. The Steading, recall, was eight pages. I guess on the plus side there IS a cavern and there IS a star shard.

This is $3 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/542514/cavern-of-the-star-shard-osr-basic-fantasy?1892600

By Oghan N'Thanda
Maria das Letra Publishing House
OSE
Levels 1-2

The Order of Archivists needs your help. Beneath the suffocating mist of the Grey Swamp lies the Mausoleum of Perpetual Fog, the supposed final resting place of Baron Aldric, “the Just.” Your mission: retrieve the sacred Book of Condolences and the Diadem of Sorrow to restore the family’s honor. The reward is high, and the danger, according to your employer, is merely the wear of time. But the truth is rotten. Baron Aldric was a murderer, and the tomb is a prison for his victim’s vengeful spirit. The Book is a grimoire of blood pacts, and the Diadem is the key to a permanent cover-up. Will you return with the gold, becoming an accomplice to a powerful lie? Or will you risk the Order’s wrath to free the true Baron, igniting a potential civil war in Old Pit?

This seven page adventure uses three pages to describe about seven (or eight?) rooms in a … hedge maze? Mausoleum? Minimalistic to an extreme yet still taking up seven pages, it’s barely an RPG, even in 1968. This isn’t worth even the minimal effort I’m going to make to write about it.

There’s a byline. That’s useless. There’s “Quick Information for the DM”. That’s useless. There’s a Focus. That’s useless. There’s a required rules. That’s useless. There’s a Quick Hook. That’s useless. This section is then followed by the real hook, which doesn’t say anything more than the Quick Hook does and is, maybe, three sentences in total as well as a rewards table? In fact, there are a suspicious number of tables in the adventure.

“PART 1: THE COURTYARD OF DECEIT (E) (A)
The mausoleum is a dark, damp structure. The wrought iron gate is rusty. The fog is thick, limiting vision to 10 feet (3 meters)” What do you think that description means? It’s kind of a preamble to room one. DO you think we’re outside? Inside? It mentions a mausoleum. That could be a block structure in the middle of a graveyard or it could be used more loosely as a dungeon-like environment above or below ground. There’s no indication. Courtyard is indicative. Oh, also, somewhere someplace this thing mentions a swamp. There’s nothing about that. It launches straight form the hook section in to that little bit I bolded above.

Directly following those words that bolded above, DIRECTLY, is the screencap above. That’s room one. There’s nothing more. No table, no extra words before or after it. That’s it. You like that? This is usually where I scream “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!” or something like that.

That there, above, is room two. It follows directly that room one information. I know. You think I’m cherry picking.

So, no, I’m not cherry picking. That’s the real page. Room three would be one of the highlights of the adventure, from an “evocative writing” standpoint. Meaning that there is any writing at all that describes something or sets a scene.

There’s a map in this that does little to help. It makes little sense, with room one leading directly to room six. Rom eight is not shown on the map but exists in the adventure.

Going back to those room keys. Note that the Key “1” is called “The Illusory Fog”, which appears as a room title in a different room. Hmmmm ….

Slop.

But, a new slop to be wary of.

This is $3 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Otherwise you wouldn’t be suckered in to losing your $3 now would you?

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/540720/broken-adventures-the-usurper-baron-s-tomb?1892600

By Hilander
Self Published
OSR
Levels 1-3

Sixty years ago, the young noble who built this mansion was to take a bride. Cakes were baked, a dress adorned with finest pearls, and guests and entertainers from across the countryside arrived to celebrate. Instead, they came to a funeral for the would-be bride, a funeral from which none emerged alive…

This eight page adventure uses five pages to describe about 22 rooms in a haunted mansion. It’s doing a relatively rare and focused style to achieve it’s terseness with some interesting evocative aspects. The promises of the overview are probably better than the rooms keys proper, though, even though this could be, in many ways, a textbook example of how to write a key. Or … START to write a key.

The young noble is getting married! Ought oh! The chick backs out at the last minute! He drowns her. Then, when the party guests show up, in shame, grief, and madness, pours strong poison in the marriage wine for a final toast. Oops. Just like a Samurai film, everyone dies in the end. Now the guests are all ghosts, the bride is a ghost, and he’s a ghost. And you’ve arrived at the mansion. This all comes in a relatively short little background section, a couple of paragraphs long. Nicely done, solidly terse, and relatable as human emotions. “The souls here are grieved by the betrayal of their host. None can rest until the spirit of the young noble is put to eternal rest, but they also.” This is good, you are given liberty, when playing the ghosts, to be a bit haphazard with them while giving them some focus as well. A couple of sentences and you can riff on. Likewise, there’s a coachman, 

We might call this almost the platonic encounter in this adventure, an example of what all other encounters are like. Big title. Coachman. A little encounter, and a terse description. Charming, warm, friendly, helpful. And then a sentence at the end in italics which brings into context the more general description above. What’s really going on, so to speak. We can see further example of this in the main adventure site keys.

I love some of what’s going on here, even if I may be dissatisfied with the results. First off we see the rooms have a room name. Music Hall. Ballroom. You know what those rooms are, because you, gentle reader, know what the fuck a music room and ballroom look like. This orients the DM. Now, when I read the rest of the description I am reading it in the context of “Ballroom.” This will make it easier to riff on things and get the imagination going. The same general formatting is present. A short little description followed by some extra DM information in italics. The italics never goes overboard and is probably right at the edge of what I would find acceptable for highlighting before it becomes harder to read. Still, another technique would have probably been better.

That’s a pretty decent monster description in The Noble’s Soul. And it’s followed up by a decent attacks description with the Adore you and then How Could You bit. Those two lines convey an awful lot of information on how to run the encounter, which is what good writing should do.

There is a bit of a gimp present. Once you enter the house the doors and windows lock and become immune to damage. I’m not the biggest fan of that, and, it would appear to neg out the Coachman a bit, perhaps leaving him to steal horses or gak the party when they come out of the house. However, there is an out: through the use of holy water on the doors/window. Big big fan of this kind of stuff. Utility items, utility spells like Bless, these are problem solvers in the characters arsenal. Should it always work? Meh. But this is a more “neutral” way, an appeal to a game world in which gods exist and actually do small things, like Bless as a problem solver instead of just a bonus.

Approached from a First DO No harm mentality, then this adventure is hitting well. It sets up the rooms well. It has something a little interactive in most places, something to discover or something to do. It keeps the text tight. it’s written from a more neutral standpoint rather than a Screw the Party standpoint. And it hits on what makes a ghost a ghost., It’s mournful. They are not just things to stab. It allows the party to discover the history through play and perhaps resolve things.

I am not in any way mad at this thing. I’m not exactly happy with it, but I’m not annoyed and you CAN run it. I am, I think, looking for just a little more though. Most rooms are going one ‘thing’ in them. It’s just a bit TOO terse. A few more evocative words. A little dynamism to the rooms and environment. A little more creepiness to it. Certainly a DM can introduce some of that, but I’d like to see just a little more support form that from the designer. As a rather basic ghostly drop in it does fine.

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is long enough that you see the intro and more than a few of rooms, so a good preview as well. And it’s nice to see it listed for $1.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/541024/the-mourning-mansion?1892600

By Travis Fauber
Self Published
Dragonslayer/OSR
Levels 1-3

A wicked corruption has befallen the Mounds of the Fairy Kings and has tainted the Barrow of the Unbroken King. The once grand halls of his tomb are now imbued with dark, sinister energy, and the honored dead who lie within have been twisted and defiled by this insidious force.

 The source of this foul magic remains shrouded in mystery. Whispers abound that a dark curse was placed upon the Mounds of the Fairy Kings by an ancient enemy seeking to dishonor the memories of those buried. Whatever the truth, it remains elusive, adding to the chilling weather that envelops these sacred barrows. The Mounds of the Fairy Kings, once a place of reverence and honor, now stands as a haunting reminder of the past, in a forest where the boundary between the mortal and the twilight realm blurs in the face of unknown danger.

This 26 page adventure uses about three pages to describe about twelve rooms. The writing is bland. The interactive elements are bland. The evocative nature of it is bland. It’s bland. 

I’m bored to death just writing this summary and would rather, well, I’ve edited out what I would rather do than write more. But write more I am. Twenty six pages for twelve rooms described in three pages. I think I’ve seen this film before and I didn’t like the ending. The usual suspects are at play. An extensive hook and background with lore. A lengthy section on how to play D&D and what a stat block means. Appendices for monsters, pre-gens, torchbearers, and summary of the XP and treasure in the adventure. Again and again and again the broken repeats: the main thing is the actual adventure. Support for the adventure is great, but not at the expense of the main adventure. When the main adventure is substandard and there is a lot of support information it forces the question to ask: what would the adventure have been like if the effort spent on the support information had instead been spent on the keys? There is no solution here. I sometimes run across travel videos on my feed that are something like “Do not trust this man in Kashmir!” Of course, none of us will run across that man. Just as no designer getting a bad review will be aware of this guideline. A mighty conundrum. The firehose of poor adventures will continue until all hope is lost. Tomorrow is a new day, until another designer brings their vision to light and flings themselves forward chaotically with little awareness. The same old same old, poor official adventures, mimicking what you’ve seen before which is almost always poor also. There is no respite from the endless line of people making the same mistakes. 

“Random monsters are an essential part of classic fantasy role-playing games, and The Barrow of the Unbroken King is no different. In normal situations, the Referee should roll for random monsters every other turn or whenever the players declare they are “searching” for something (with a roll of 1 on a d6 indicating an encounter)” What?! No rules for how to roll dice and read the THACO chart? 

“The exterior of the barrow mound has a diameter of 60 feet. At each compass point, four menhirs stand 30 feet away from the barrow. These stones are marked with petroglyphs that detail the life of The Unbroken King.” And thus a column of backstory was born. Contributing little to nothing to the adventure. 

What is the purpose of a monster entry? Following our major guidelines, everything in an adventure should tie back to running the adventure at the table. What do you need from a monster entry to do that? Some stats, surly, HP, AC, attacks. And, I would assert a description. You you need an ecology of the monster to run it at the table? No, almost certainly not. SO, what should be prioritized? The ecology or the description? I’m not arguing for inline stat blocks, I have no opinion on those. I am, though, asserting that “an ogre attacks you” is less assistance to the DM, less evocative, than a terse and evocative description of the lumbering brute with great yellowed tusks. Guess how the monster entries are arranged in this?

These keys, the main part of the adventure. There’s nothing here. Yes, sure, niches to loot and a few monsters. But there’s not really anything here for a DM to hang their hat on. No evocative writing. Really not much more than, say, Palace of the Vampire Queens monster listing and treasure. B2 may have more interesting encounters.

Are you not entertained? What type of gem? No altar description. Nothing about an evocative curse detail. It’s not that any one of those things would make this stand out, but it’s all the bare minimum. This is what you are paying your money for. And there’s not much more here than a random number generation on a table would provide.

I am aware that for the vast majority of designers there is no malice. This is not a money grab. They had a vision and they just were not able to translate that vision on to the paper. It’s just so frustrating. This can’t be the vision the designer set off to put down and I don’t know how you make it pass a proof read not knowing that.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $5. No preview. You gotta put in a preview so we can make an informed purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/544497/the-barrow-of-the-unbroken-king-kickstarter-preview?1892600

By Dave Robinson
KEH Publishing
OSE
Levels 4-6

Travel from the city of Cismontane into one of the worlds beyond the Breaking on a mission to stop a monstrous cult. While shopping in the main market in Cismontane, one of the nearby merchants calls out to one of the party members, selected at random. “Hey, that ruffian stole your amulet!” 

This 26 page single-column adventure describes a short linear adventure with a few scenes to Save The World. Yes yes, I know, but, also, it has some nice touches to it with great puzzles and hints of great imagery. But just hints. 

Dude had an idea. It feels like it’s a home campaign idea. Dude put his ideas down on paper and published it. Dude knows nothing about adventure design. Inevitable result happens. Also, dude does actually know something about how some parts of D&D work and craft a decent Special encounter. 

There are bits of this that make me think this comes straight out of a home game. This is centered around what the designer admits is a Stargate ripoff. Ages ago the gods threw down one of their own blah blah blah, temple at the site around the ensuing spatial rift eventually becomes a city. “The Skid” is the main street, representing the bodies skid down the mountain, blah blah blah. We’ve got some norse and egyptian and greek gods based game, and the temple now allows adventurers through the rift to various places using special amulets as passes. The mixed pantheon, the riffing on a stargate, the skid, and, of course, placing the dungeon under the local bar (or, in the temple in this case) is a time honored home game feature from the early days. 

There are some parts to this that are quite good. In particular there’s a kind of perspective puzzle to get in to a building. Looking at the facade from one angle does one thing, looking at it from another does another thing. Shrinking features, growing features. It’s great puzzle, the likes of which is seldom seen in adventures. Not only is there this perspective thing going on but also a kind of environmental thing as you have to figure out how to, essentially, build a ramp to it in the skewed perspective that allows entrance. The designer is trying for, explicitly, an otherworldly vibe here and it does that quite well. It’s explained in a cumbersome way, and the evocative language is not really present, but the strength here is the core of the puzzle proper and it carries a lot of the heavy lifting for that vibe. Really good job and an excellent example of thinking about design in terms of imagination rather than starting from the standard book challenges of trap, environment, skill check. 

There’s another portion, inside the temple, with a great piles of bodies, mostly skeletonized, and black cable-like things extending from the ceiling in to them. The skeletons get ‘animated’ by the cables, in a kind of puppet way instead of being undead. As you hit the skeletons pulses of energy ripple up the cables, with the entire encounter being treated much the same way as one would a hydra. You can kind of get a good image of what the designer meant, even if it, again, isn’t exactly the most evocative or clear way of describing it is present. The mechanical animation and treating it like a hydra are great riffs as well, again, a kind of imagination forward version of design with some rules thrown in to make it work instead of the other direction. 

The adventure, though, is amateurish. And I don’t mean that in an overly negative way. Perhaps, uneducated, or unaware? I write sometimes about the difference between how a home game is run and an adventure for publication. I might scribble some notes on a paper and run the game from that. I’ve thought some about the game and those notes are really just a reminder of the aspects of the adventure I want to hit on as I riff my way to the game, responding to what the party is doing. I know what I mean when I see the words on the paper. I was inspired by something and thought about it and the notes are really just a way to get back into that vibe. The challenge, when writing for publication, is to transfer all of those ideas and imagery and whatnot into words on the paper, such that the DM using it picks them up and gets generally the same vibe I was going for. It’s all about efficient and effective communication from the designer to the DM, not losing the flavour initially imagined even before those homemade notes were made. 

Some of this is formatting. We see here a single-column approach which makes that information transfer clumsy. And being concise in the writing while still being evocative. And here the writing is somewhat cumbersome and the general vibes meant are not really conveyed very well in the use of the descriptive language. Lost in the translation of The Telephone Game, so to speak. And then there’s the linear gameplay, where scene A leads to B leads to C leads to D. This is something that I think a home game does often, with the DM providing the glue to tie the various beats together, riffing in between them and perhaps dropping clues, etc to get the party to the next beat. Chase a thief, wander into cultists, go through the Breaking/Stargate, hit the temple exterior, then the two scenes in the interior, to get their stolen item back. And in a published adventure there needs to be just a bit more glue. Not a railroad, but support for the DM to get from A to B to C without it looking linear, just as one might do in a home game. 

There’s an off phrase here an theorem padding things out. And a frustrating “Between the altar and the carving is a large chest containing the enemy’s hoard. From the way it’s piled, it looks like it was just dumped there. The hoard is Treasure Type B, with one each of types L, N, and O.” which really should have been expanded upon. There’s a rough fight in there also with an EHP and minions, but I’m gonna trust that the credited playtesters made it through without too much DM fudging.

Dudes heart is in the right place though, and the perspective puzzle is a great idea. He knew what he wanted to do, he’s just having a trouble getting there and communicating it to the buyers.

This is $3 at DriveThru. No preview. Boo! Boo! You gotta do a preview so I can make an informed purchasing decision. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/544746/into-the-breaking?1892600

By Nicole Mattos, Davide Tramma, Icaco Agostino
Angry Golem Games
OSE
Levels 2-4

In a place far distant from civilization there’s the remote island of Enjin no Chi, or The Land of the Fire God. Even though it has a magnificent landscape, no living soul dares to enter the region and get exposed to its dangers. It is a place shrouded in terrifying legends, spoken of only in whispers by the few sailors who have seen its shores from afar. Tales warn of a land where nature itself has gone mad and unknown monstrosities hunt in the volcanic gloom.

This sixteen page adventure gives a rough overview of four sites. “How to ruin a bad ass erupting volcano” hates keys, loves generalizations, and is, essentially, a wall of text for the four sites it does present. 

There is always room for new things. New. Ideas. New ways of implementing old things. Refinements. Experimentation. And there is also room for looking at your own latest perpetual motion machine and deciding it doesn’t work and scrapping it before you release it on the world. This is #1 in the fortnightly adventure series. It looks pretty good. Let us hope that looking good and putting out a product every fortnight does not trump a good product? But, you know the answer to that already, don’t you? They had an idea. That’s great. They implemented the idea. That’s even better. They should have spent a lot more time implementing the idea before releasing it. 

And it’s pretty obvious there was a lack of focus here. The designers didn’t know what they were designing, or why. And therefore they couldn’t match the design to the porpoice.I’m not saying that every product made needs to originate in a home game that is then edited to make it to publication. But I think it’s clear that this was an idea that came about without much thought about what was actually needed. Either that or it’s guilty of original sin: just another in an endless line of mass consumerism in the RPG industry meant to be read instead of played. A good example is the content density. It’s four hexes, one hex per page. That’s four pages out of sixteen. There’s a place in an adventure for support information. But when you’re doing four pages of content and twelve pages of support and boilerplate then it raises the question of what the priority here was. It’s not the actual content, thats for sure. Yeah, the digital page count is free, in that there’s no cost difference between four pages and sixteen pages. But its clear that there IS a cost, in focusing on the gameable material. The time spent on the boilerplate and support information heavily outweighs the time spent on the heart of the adventure for the DM. You gotta work the keys. You gotta work the adventuring sites. You gotta work the heart of the gameable material. 

And the core of the adventure, those four hexes, are very loose. In a hex crawl I might image some very loose language, resulting in a paragraph or so. An adventure seed. But once we reach a page I would expect something more concrete. It’s just loose language though, saying nothing more than a paragraph would, just spread out over the entire page. It’s combined with “dungeon-like” environments for some of them, complete with maps. Unkeyed maps. “Inside the tunnel, they’ll find a Skeleton from a cultist’s body. He will be depressed in a corner, crying and mumbling to himself. He will attack if the characters come too close or try to touch him. He might engage in a conversation with the PCs. He’ll tell them he was left behind by his lover during one of the missions to exterminate the beetles” The skeleton is weird. An erudite skeleton? Ok, sure, it’s D&D. But it just feels out of place, and isn’t keyed on the map except with a very general “Skeleton here” note with an arrow pointing to a hallway.  Toss in some 6HD and 12HD opponents. 

The central conceit, I think, is that there’s this giant erupting volcano and you’re in the hexes around it. Which is kind of a cool image. Lava, smoke, ash (rules provided!) and so on. But i don’t think it really gets much into the erupting volcano vibe. Sure, rules for ash falling from the sky. But beyond that there’s nothing that really sells that vibe, either in the four hexes or in the support material. And this is with a literal lava monster living in a cave in the volcano. It’s just not there, the vibe. 

I’m not sold on the hybrid map/general description layout. I’m not sold on the almost wall of text like hex descriptions. There’s not much solid to sell the whole vibe of any of the hexes. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is the first six pages, which is mostly boilerplate. It needed to show us maybe a hex description and the accompanying map for it, or something like that, to get an idea of what he actual contents were.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/545174/fortnightly-adventures-1-the-flame-pact-ose?1892600

Motherfuck! I had to correct that four times before it would take porpoise! Lethal poison for the system.

By Morgan Davie
Taleturn
Moldvay
Levels 1-3

Atop a lonely sheer-sided plateau stands a Keep, an outpost against the chaos that creeps in nearby caves. Few know that another fortress lies abandoned and hidden within the stony mount itself. Strange wonders and forgotten treasures lie within, waiting to be claimed by brave adventurers. Dare YOU enter the hidden halls?.

This twenty page adventure features a four level dungeon with about eighty rooms that is entered through BELOW the Keep on the Borderlands. Coinage is abstracted and the writing is not evocative. There’s an interesting concept or two, but otherwise this is cramped and bland. 

Looks like the guildhall in the Keep on the Borderlands has a secret. Literally. They’ve found a secret door in their basement. For 10% of the take they’ll let you through it. Inside you find four levels of underground dungeon with about 20-25 rooms per level. Turns out this place used to be a fortress of chaos! 

Oh, hey, you’re not finding treasure though. I mean, you’re not finding treasure you can level with. You’ll find a potion or scroll or something here or there. But, as for that sweet sweet lucre that drives all adventurers and the level titles they want, well: “22. Secret store. Behind this secret door is a small treasure hoard: three potions of healing, two potions of invisibility, two sacks worth of silver coins, and two gems.” Yeah. Two sacks worth of silver coins and two gems. No values. Not anywhere. It’s all abstracted away like that. 

I find this super puzzling. This IS the core of Moldvay. Gold=XP. Maybe B/X and 1e, both learn hard core to the GAME side of the spectrum. You ARE looking for gold so that you can level. It’s you against the game world with the DM as judge. You win D&D every time you don’t die and get some more progress towards your next level. It’s a fucking GAME and the points are laid in Gold, literally. You can roleplay. You can have fun. You SHOULD do those things. But the gold’s the thing. That’s a core reason I like B/X, the more game-like and carefree nature of it. It might be similar to a 5e adventure that pays TOO much attention to coinage. Hey, that’s not what you do in 5e. Gold is a plot device. If you need a lot of it then I would expect it, but, otherwise, what is core to B/X becomes part of a victorian laundry list in 5e. It’s just so jarring to see the main point being abstracted here. “Put in some treasure.” Uh. Ok. Isn’t that the designers job? DOn’t they have the chore of putting smaller treasures in and then locating the larger treasures in lairs? Don’t they have the job of not putting the hoard in the first room? Of making the layout of the map make sense in relation to the contents of the map? Fuck it man. Who cares anymore, I guess.

Let us, however, ignore the rather small and simplistic maps. Forward! To adventure!

What you’re looking at is nearly a column of text describing room one in the dungeon. This is the basement room of the guildhall and the entrance to the hidden halls. And it’s got trap and door porn in it. This is nearly a column of text to handle two secret doors in a room with a basin. Which are also bland in description if not in effect. Shaking their fists, magical blade, that’s great. I’m not sure, though, that this is the sort of entrance to the mythic underworld I was looking for.

Never fear though, we follow that up with rooms three and four. Rotted. Fungus. Beetle-men. No, I don’t know what they look like. “Stats as fire beetles.” So, yeah. I’d like to point out at this point that B2 was not the end all be all of design. It’s been fifty years. I think we can do a little better. There is a huge place in D&D for “monster wants to eat you, better stab it.” And there’s no place in D&D for an overwrought encounter. But there is a place in the middle where everything works together, the encounter, hack or no, has enough in it for the DM to riff on, both in creature and environment. “Fungus and wrecked doors” does not a description make. Nor does “fire-beetle men”, presumably just standing there waiting to die and have their glands ripped out? Hmmm, come to think of it, I love the idea of giant throbbing diamond-forehead men. Enough diamonds growing out of their foreheads to level. Sitting in a circle playing games and singing songs. “How the fuck did these dudes live even this long?!” As your DM I make no judgment upon you, PC’s, but simply delight in glee at the reaction to the situation.

Ok, so, anyway. Here’s a trap: “The area in front of the false door is a drop-away floor (a dungeon trap). When triggered, everyone within ten feet of the door is dropped into a chute that deposits them into the pool in level two area 14.” It’s a trap? Yeah, it’s a trap. As delighted as I am to see a reappearance of a chute trap (Only desperate Angband players can realize the full horror of a chute trap) I think it could be handled better. And room title. I like room titles. I think they provide a good framing for the room ahead, getting the DMs head in the right place for the description to come. When they are done well. But not when done blandly. “Safe room” “hidden treasure” “old shapes.” These are somewhat abstracted summaries of the room. Rather, provide a vibe for the room. But not here.

It’s not the worse thing ever written. It’s just bland, minimalistic, and padded out all at the same time.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3.50. There is no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/537478/mb1-into-the-hidden-halls?1892600

By Morgan Davie
Taleturn
Moldvay
Level 1

The great lands of Law do not march forever. At the great wall of tall, steep hills, Law’s reach fades, and beyond flickers the uneasy influence of Chaos. Between the two, amongst foothills and thick forest, beneath strange purple sunsets, is the Borderlands. Here waits adventure.

This sixteen page regional supplement presents a small area in and around B1 and B2 with several adventuring sites. I’m not sure how it even got to sixteen pages given the lack of things in it and the lack of detail in those things. It’s written like someone is describing an adventure to someone else.

Moldvay always gets reviewed and this is a Moldvay supplement. It’s meant to be a small region in and around the Keep on the Borderlands. It also locates B1 in its area, and tries to expand the adventuring sites, villages, and dungeons in the area. The usual “yes, but what’s past the hermit’s kitty cat?” stuff from B2. The issue here is both in density and specificity. There’s not much past the lizard men, either literally or figuratively. 

First, there’s no map. No regional map. I find this strange. If you’re doing a region, especially one with both B1 and B2 in it, outlying villages, small adventuring sites and so on, then where are they, in relation to each other? How do I get from here to there? I don’t want to make it seem like I absolutely HAVE to have a map every time, but, in many cases, yes, a map would help. There’s some adventuring site here in this, a tower, that overlooks both the lands of law and the lands of chaos. That’s a great idea. Get an idea of the Valley of Chaos, ie: the caves. That would be a great lead in to much intrigue, watching the comings and goings. And, perhaps, meeting an orc band or something like that who is also doing the same thing to the keep. I just can’t help thinking that having a map SHOWING all of that, the adventuring sites, the villages, roads and relationship of the smaller sites to the larger ones, would help. Plus, there’s the wanderers table. How do you run a decent wanderer without knowing the distance to travel? I mean, they are based on time, which is based on distance and terrain. Why include a wanderer table if there’s no time/distance to wander? It’s a curious decision, to not include one. But not necessarily fatal.

The density here is another issue. I don’t know what exactly is going on, but the things FEELS so sparse. Overview of the lands, village, rumors, retainers, minor sites, NPC parties, events … I don’t think it should feel sparse, but it does. It just all feels a little bland and uninteresting. Maybe, kind of like those adventures that just pull a wanderer table straight out of a DMG. No embellishment. Here’s a list of retainers. Just stat blocks and a name. Well, sure, Ready Ref. Here’s a village. We gave it a fifth of a page. It doesn’t say anything more than Ready Ref did. Just kind of bland content. “Costs 1d10sp between each adventure” says the first bullet point of the village. Ok, so, upkeep costs. That’s fun. Mechanics oriented, just the facts. Which I kind of admire about Ready Ref. That thing was DENSE.  The language of pure adventure support. But, I think the idea that you are going to support the region comes with an implicit expectation that there will be COLOR in the region. And there’s not any in that village. And very little in the rest. Angry owlbear with a hornet singer in its ass also gets six or so sentences, to no effect beyond “angry owlbear with a stinger in its ass. So while there are sixteen pages here and a few “adventure site” one pagers, the density here, the ratio of interesting content to padding and blandness, is quite off.

The content, proper, can feel abstracted. Not as if an encounter is being listed, but rather as if someone were describing an encounter, much in the same way that I do in a review. A ghostly warrior who is you defeat will point to a gravesite containing the same sword and armor we wore and also a chest of gold. How much gold? Deets on the armor and sword? Nope. That’s it. It’s more of a seed, an idea of an encounter rather than encounter. And much of this feels that way. It’s tax day in town! That’s really all you’re getting. I get that some of these are meant to be ideas, but they seem longer than a seed, an idea but lacking the specificity that one might expect to be able to really launch them in to something, something to riff on. “Artillery – A mounted heavy crossbow is aimed along the western passage and sentries always keep watch for visitors. Most kobolds sleep here, on piles of wrecked gnomish loot.” It’s an idea. There ARE kobolds here, sentries at the least, yes? I don’t understand why its written this way. It’s like there’s an allergy to the specifics. And, yet, sometimes you’ll get paid 2sp by someone to do something. It’s maddening, the seemingly random way in which sometimes minor and meaningless trivia is included and yet the meat of what should be in the adventure is not.

There’s another adventure in this series. While this is a kind of regional setting the other adventure appears to be an actual dungeon. I’m going to review that one next and see if, perhaps, this is all a symptom of being a setting-like place? In any event, I can’t see much value here.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3.50. There is no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/537471/mb0-morgue-s-borderlands?1892600