tenfootpole.org

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

By Zzarchov Kowolski
Self Published
NGR/OSR
Level Any/1

A dead body found clutching a map is found at a major crossroads with an arrow in his back. He wear simple clothing, leather armor, a sheathed sword, and carries a backpack with three torches, 50; of rope, an empty wineskin and a flask of oil. The map shows the crossroads and leads to a tower labelled “treasure” in beautiful handwriting, apparently only half an hour into the forest.

This twelve page digest adventure features a five room tower. It’s a cross between a Fuck You and a kind of hook for a larger campaign thread, much like the advice in Broodmother.It can’t be denied that Zzarchov knows their shit. A brief little thing stretched out.

This describes a five room dungeon in a tower. It’s a roach motel for humans. Humans go in, find treasure, spend it and, low and behold, the coins are a slow poison. Which, theoretically, sow discord and rebellion among the wealthy and powerful as coinage circulates upwards and the power vacuum from deaths foment unrest and rebellion. The bent is toward the elves doing this, but, obviously, it’s whatever baddies you want in the campaign. If it’s lotFP then, obviously, aliens, since everything in LotFP is aliens, but, whoever you want.

The suggestion is that he DM drop the tower in to the players game. They find a map at the crossroads. It leads to a nearby tower. Off you go. But, also, it’s suggested that as the campaign progresses, the characters start to hear rumors about other people who have been to other towers. This is a hint to a larger conspiracy going on in the game world and thus, an initial adventure hook is actually the hook for a larger campaign arc, etc. All undetailed here, but it’s an interesting idea. 

The whole tower takes three or four pages to describe. It’s five rooms. A Five Room Dungeon. Sound familiar? The Entrance, The Puzzle. The Red Herring. The Climactic Battle. The Reward. Zzarchov is not afraid to go tell the Bad D&D Advice people to fuck off, implicitly anyway. He takes the common bad advice trotted out for pay per word views and mocks it in fine style. And this, the Roach Motel of adventures, is the perfect place to do that in. It walks the line well. Roach Motel for Humans by Elves. Mocking the bad advice prevalent on the internet for adventures. This could be mean-spirited. Instead it simply shows you the absurdity of these ideas as implemented and leverages them in to the beginning of a nice campaign arc. After all, isn’t the first adventure SUPPOSED to lead to the last one? 

Each room of the five tower rooms looks like a normal dungeon room. A room, dominate by a large wooden throne. Seated on it a skeleton with gemstones for eyes in a suit of ancient bronze armor with a horned helmet. An echoing inhuman voice “I vow to slay all violators who have defined my tower!” But, the ancient armor shows no signs of rust. No one ever wears horned helmets. The throne isn’t aged at all, just stained a dark color, as are the wooden doors. There’s a ladder propped up nearby to reach the trapdoor in the ceiling to the roof level. The chest on the roof is dark stained balsa wood, identical to the one on the first floor. And so on and so on. Looking just a little beyond the surface shows that something is quite off, in every room, from every standpoint. The build, the aging, the tower isn’t even is there to defend anything, being out of place. 

Each room calls these things out in detail. There’s a little description, sometimes a column long for the longer rooms, and another section of “Clues Something is off …” The riddle room accepts any answer as an answer “Hrm, a worthy answer that I fid accept, the curse on the bars has been lifted.” Any basic inspection of anything, beyond the surface level, will reveal something isn’t quite right here.

This is a gimmick adventure. Essentially a hook for a larger campaign. For what it is it’s fine. Perhaps a little obvious in places, like the balsa wood, but the vast majority of it is subtle enough to make it through a first glance unless one digs deeper. Perhaps a little long for what it is, but, seen for what it is, a print promo offering (which is what I seem to recall it is) it’s a fine little give-away. 

This is $3 at DriveThru. No Previeeeewwwww!!!!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/537468/pest-control?1892600

By Corey Hickson
Corey Hickson Games
OSE
Levels 1-2

The adventurers celebrated their newfound wealth in Crossroads Vale, a prosperous trading village, merrymaking and sharing their spoils with the townsfolk. Unbeknownst to them, the hoard was a trap left by the dragon for the foolish and unwary and every treasure they returned with is cursed! As twilight fell, Crossroads Vale descended into chaos. The cursed treasure unleashed strange monsters and terrible magic: an enraged manticore rampaged, petrifying townsfolk; the fountain in the market square churned with a possessed water elemental; and a parasitic ooze began animating the dead.

Life is Pain.

This eighteen page adventure presents thirteen possible encounters in five pages in a village suffering from an influx of cursed magical items. A loose collection of aimlessness wrapped in some Wouldn’t It Be Fun If does not an adventure make. This is also, likely, a one-shot. 

“I wrote this adventure with fun at its heart. I hope it brings you and your friends laughter and a joyful game night” I, obviously, do not know the definition of the word “fun.” The adventure starts in an inn. The town has gone crazy. You’re the [butcher, baker, candlestick maker, mayor, alewife, etc.] Hank the Adventurer is there. He brought back a cartload of treasure from the local dragons lair and the entire town celebrated. Except. Shit started happening. There’s a water monster in the town fountain and a manticore is flying around the town square turning people to stone. 

“Hank the Adventurer (pg. 5) is at a lone table, carefully plotting how to get as much of the cursed loot and escape the Vale before the slumber arrives.” Hank is described as “Voluble, Ignoble, and Determined.” He knows everyone in town is going to sleep at midnight, in seven hours, because of a magic orb in the town square. As far as I can tell, Hank is the only one in town to know this, besides the person who caused it, Ekert. “Hank now realizes the rumor he got from Ekert began this horrid night.” Sooo … how do you get from point A to point B? How do you get info out of Hank, learning about Ekert and the orb? Clearly, it has to come from Hank. And, I think, just as clearly, Hank, the 3HD warrior with a +3 sword who can shoot fire rays from a magic amulet,  is described in such a way that he’s not going to want to tell the L1 party. So … what do we do? You are, I suppose, the village worthies, by want of being the player characters anyway, so, you’re motivated, I guess, to save your fellow villagers. And pissed, maybe that Hank won’t help you?  This FEELS an awful lot like the adventures in which the quest giver/hook is an asshole and you have to beg to go on the adventure. I can get to The Town Is In Danger And We Need To Help! I’m having a much harder time with Hank, and getting the information you need from Hank in order to actually play the adventure. 

Moving to the actual encounters, they come in three types. We’ve got monsters rampaging. This is the manticore in the town square and the water weird in the town fountain. The weird is a kind of puzzle, you need to figure out there’s a cursed coin in the fountain and remove it. So, a straight up fight with the manticore and/or lure it away (since the Midnight Sleep Orb is in the same place) and/or puzzle your way past the water weird. Then there are some kind of Weird Monster locations. The graveyard has a ghost and some zombies with only tenuous ties to whats going on and not much reason to explore. Likewise a farmhouse with two dudes turned in Beauty & Beast type couches. Ok. Sure? Just weirdness. And then finally some things to spice things up. There’s a wanderer table, which could really use cross-references to the named people you encounter, and some rando locales/encounters you can throw in. The best of these is probably the WIll o the Wisps. “Help, I’m trapped!” seems like a perfect things for them to do in a village full of chaos. Being able to use a classic monster like this in a way in which they fit, and the party won’t suspect, is great. The context f the encounter, the village in danger, leverages the Wisps core aspect, luring people to their doom in a dangerous situation. Hearing a “Help!” out of he blue puts you on edge. Hearing a “help!” in a situation in which you EXPECT to hear a help is good monster usage. (See also: harpy singing, etc.)

The encounters tend to be short, a column at most, and formatted well so they are easy to scan. Not everything makes sense; there is weird bolding to highlight things that should not, perhaps, be highlighted. And the ending of the adventure doesn’t really make sense. You presumably stop the madness, but, there’s no epilogue, which I think would have been nice, even in a one shot. O, maybe, especially in a one-shot. 

So, it’s a one-shot. You need to work it to get to some coherance.

This is $3.50 at DriveThru. The preview is the first four pages. It should, as always, really show some encounters. The Hank NPC description gets you a good way there though, if you know, from this review, what the rest is like.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/536929/cursed-calamity-at-crossroads-vale?1892600

By Guilherme Providello
Savvy Thief Studios
OSE
Level 1

For years, you were victims of an imperial Senator who lived in the Capital. He stole you as children from your home village in the Ancestral Peninsula, and assured your subservience through drugs and witchcraft. After many years receiving this treatment, you no longer remember who you truly are or where you came from. Enslavement was never accepted in the Empire, and one day his illegal actions were discovered. In a desperate flight towards your forgotten homeland, the senator let his guard down. And now, at last, he lies dead at your feet. This momentous death is only the beginning of the PCs’ struggle to recover their past

This thirty page supplement uses about ten pages to describe ten hexes in a Roman/Iberian like setting. It’s just boring crap. Nothing going on. Hardly a hex crawl. At a page per hex you’d think SOMETHING was happening here. No. Good luck. 

This thing is so frustrating. It took me a minute to figure out why. It’s Isle of the Unknown all over again. Maybe not QUITE as bad, but close. And when I say bad I mean aimless. There’s an aimlessness here. But, let’s back up. 

We start with the framing. Ok, you’re from fantasy-Iberia and you were fantasy-enslaved to a fantasy-roman senator who removed your fantasy-memories. You’ve fantasy-killed him right at the fantasy-threshold to fantasy-Iberia with the game starting with “How did you manage to kill the senator? What did you find on his body“. (I guess the whole “physical violence may be kept off-screen” is out the window as a trigger, yeah?) So, I guess you’re fleeing into non-Roman Iberia and away from Roman lands? Got it? You’re escaped slaves who just murdered someone. 

So what’s the frequency Kenneth? What are you doing in this hex crawl? I guess it’s always the players job to find a motivation for doing things, yeah? But it just seems like there’s more to this. You are hexcrawling in a settled land. Whose treasure you stealing to level up? Or, who you stabbing to level up? That leaves the usual culprits: demons and animals. And, there are a couple of demons here in two of the hexes. More on that later, right now we’re philosophizing. How do you level in a world in which you can’t loot to level? I don’t know man. What do you exploit when you can’t exploit? I guess you just damn the torpedos and full hypocrite ahead? I’m down for a more nuanced view of monsters. After all, I love a good situation. But we’re still playing a game. The designer has to give us something to do. There’s got to be an out, someone to kill and something to loot if we’re playing a game in which we get XP by killing and looting. If you want to write for the “get xp by interacting with the environment” game then I’m down with that also. But that’s not what is going on here. I mean, IM happy to stab and loot, but, also, it seems more than a little disrespectful to play the Things Fall Apart adventure by looting houses and killing people. So, the designer forgot something. A critical something. 

We’ve got a hex with d3x100 mermaids in it in a cave surrounded by shipwrecks. Hot damn! That’s a real hex crawl hex! We’ve got a hex with the millers family under the sway of a demon disguised as a pig with the families children rooting around in the pigpen. NOICE! A demon goat trapped under a hill temple. A witch in the woods. This is all very classical. 45 giant eagles in a lair. WTF?! Rock on man! This is the shit! Wilderlands eat your heart out! Lots of shit in the lair man! The lair where the goodies are …

But, then, the entry goes on for a page. Wilderlands did this in a couple of sentences, not a page. If Wilderlands jumped off a bridge then would you? Yes. Yes I would. A column for a stat block and a column for an encounter and treasure. I’m not even sure what the fuck to do with this encounter. I mean, stumbling upon it. Live and let live, I guess? There’s no reason to go here. There’s no reason to interact. Oh, look, we need a place to sleep for tonight? And the kids live in the sty? Ok. When in Iberia do as the Iberians do. Either I want to exploit a situation for my own ends or I’m an interfering do gooder? For my definition of good? I guess that’s why its a demon? Platonically bad? Does that cash belong to the miller though?

This is another full page hex and this is the pertinent part of the description. Do you care? Why are you interacting here? Domed rock? An entrance to it? Do you see one? In THAT text? Ok. Uh. I guess we move on? There’s just nothing here. I mean, functionally, what’s the difference between this goat encounter and “a 10 foot tall parrot on stork legs is in this hex.” (That being the platonic Isle of the Unknown encounter.) There isn’t on? Just more words spreads across the page?

Ok. So. What secrets? There are none. That’s it. That’s all you get. Can you riff on it? Sure. In the same way I can riff on a dictionary entry. In the lava temple the text tells us that “A lot of care and courage are necessary to leap from rock to rock over the lava to reach the temple (see map.)” There is no map. There’s a line drawing, a little art piece, of some rocks in a stream/lava. Is that it? Cause there ain’t no map of a temple.

This is pointless. The designer has explicitly outlined a play style and then provided hexes in which the journey is the destination … but no rules for XP for the journey. What the fuck do you do here? It is a simplistic worldview presented where a more nuanced one would have resulted in the situations in which a party of characters can enter.

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. That shows you the slant but not any of the hexes, and it really should have shown some hexes to be a good preview. We need to see what we’re getting ourselves in to.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/534682/ancestral-peninsula-1?1892600

By Adam Helešic
The Curios Eye
OSE
Levels 1-2

Delve into the decrepit druidic crypt occupied by the warring tribes of lizard men and gullygugs. Discover its treasure, history, secrets, and rituals. Ally yourselves with the inhabitants, fight them, outsmart them, use every advantage you have to gain the upper hand and leave the dungeon with pockets full of gold, gems, and magic items!

This 24 page adventure uses thirteen pages to describe about twenty rooms in a druid crypt/cave complex overrun by a couple of humanoid factions. It tries. Really hard. Like, maybe, if you really tried to hand copy an illuminated manuscript. It just feels off, as if the various rooms don’t really belong together or interact together in any but the most basic of ways. The OSE style is not used in a very effective manner and the writing could be better. Still, though, you can see an adventure in there.

In a throwback, we’ve got no hook here. There’s just a giant tree with a hole hacked in to it and a set of stairs going down. Inaside we find an old elven druid burial ground. At least a few rooms full of it. And some bullywugs who’ve started to set up a lair. And some lizard men who are also trying to set up a lair. With the two groups fighting. And a treant protector of the tomb, who is absolutely useless, who wants everyone to be respectful. And a genie that the bullywugs have who is kind of an asshat in a new and different genie way. And some arcana spiders who just want to be left alone too do their magic shit. . Which almost certainly means they’d be REAL happy if the bullywugs were wiped out. No one likes you bullywug! Go home! Enter the party. 

The map supporting play has, I don’t know, maybe one major loop. It does have monsters noted on the map and is easy to read, but also it feels rather linear. Not, I don’t know, natural? It’s ok. If you were looking for a basic map to support an adventure then this would do it. It’s not going to create fun, but, there it is.

And, that’s kind of the same with everything in this. What if you knew what the correct thing to do was but can’t quite get there? There are wanderers. They are doing things. But, well, they are not great. “1d6 lizard men in a battle-ready formation, slowly moving through the dungeon.” Well, ok, sure. But thats really not much more than my d12 table I use in my game for wandering motivations. It’s fine. Really. 

There’s a line in this that I think is great. “The gullygugs are bandits, thieves, and overall bastards who can’t agree on anything, their approach always preceded by the sounds of their bickering.” That should, I think, be the springboard to many encounters and many situations. But I don’t think it’s taken advantage of. Playing them against each other. Hearing them coming. Luring them away. That’s the kind of “neutral environment” thing that I love. But I can’t see the adventure really taking advantage of it at all. Or, even, making opportunities where it could come in to play beyond the most simplistic “we approach the room and hear arguing” sort of thing. A potential denied, so to speak.

There’s OSE formatting. OSE formatting can be good. But only if done well. Is it done well here? Well, no? There’s descriptive text. Is it done well here? Well, no? There’s encounters with people to talk to and scheme. But, is it done well here? Well, no? Is any of it done BADLY, to the point of being odious, obviously off the mark or so on? Well, no.

We can see from that clip the OSE style. And how it has been clumsily implemented. Then, given the sarcophagi, the treant (in a dungeon …) and the skeleton vine dude, what order would you put the follow up the detail in? Or even the initial OSE style detail? Which is likely to be the most important thing, meaning what the party notice first or interacts with the party first, etc. What are you likely, as a DM to NEED first, in terms of follow up order and what are you likely to want to know about first, as a player, in terms of the OSE description section? Not what’s there. And then, the dude. The skeleton vine dude. Essentially he doesn’t do anything. I think the designer MEANT for this to be important. Interacting with him, what he says/des etc. But I don’t get much of anything out of that description. How to use him, both literally and figuratively. There is a lack of … payoff? Build up that leads to payoff? Does anything there, on that entire page, make you excited and the make the juices broil and cause ideas to leap to mind? Sure, not everything has to be The Jungle Cruise at Disney, but, also, maybe we can get to Epcot levels? Nothing there inspires.

And, even, nothing there is very well integrated in to the other environments. The lizard men, the bullywugs, the genie, the arcanas … there’s not much here. The treant would like people to play nice. Great. We just need a little more here. Some slightly stronger leanings towards interactive play. You can’t just SAY there are factions, you also need a little shove in to factions.

There’s this tendency to miss the obvious thing in the adventure. We see here the murmuring figure, a 50% chance of being there. Ok. Kind of an OSE description. Ok, not the bets one ever. Kind of a lack of understanding what the OSE description style is, but it’s there. I wonder, though, what the murmuring figure IS? There’s no indication of which monster this is. It’s not obvious at all. I’m not cherry picking, it’s not in text below this or anything like that. There’s just nothing there. You just missed one step: what the fuck it is. The most important one. In another spot there’s this adventurer that’s is emaciated, slumped against a wall, almost in a coma or asleep. He’s got some worm thing sucking his could out, and it will attack the party. But, what then, the adventurer? Nothing. Nothing at all. Who is he. Does he wake up. What if the party manages it? I get it “12 prisoners in a cell” don’t all need a personality and a life story. Sometimes genero dude is just a genero dude. But this is ONE guy. And it’s almost certainly the case that the party will do SOMETHING to try and help him. And if almost every party is going to do almost the same thing every time, then it seems like the designers job to maybe just provide a couple of words there to help support the DM during play.

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/527477/the-crypt-beneath-the-earth?1892600

By Tim Duncan
CritHeads Gaming
Castles & Crusades
Level 9?

150 years ago, each continent was ruled by its own Kings or Queens, with the exception of Athel, which was a true wildland and sparsely populated. King Bisdain of Othellis, a primarily human continent, set his eyes on Athel. He wasn’t the only one. In the west, the orcs of Undgar had several settlements established, and in the East, the elves of Vewul had built a magnificent frontier city, Mulvic, and had designs for another one. King Bisdain began his bloody conquest in the west, while secretly building the Eld Bridge to the east. The human steel was far superior to the orcish iron, and they managed to drive the orcs entirely from the land and into seclusion on Undgar. The King and his troops wasted no time moving east, converging with reinforcements from across the newly finished Eld Bridge, and laid siege to Mulvic. While the elves had far fewer numbers, their tactics and techniques kept the invaders at bay for nearly 20 years. As the years past, the elves’ numbers slowly dwindled, and the capital City of Isvewul across the sea was getting desperate to liberate their surrounded people. It was in this desperation that the elves created the Sentinels, mechanical humanoid constructs built to be controlled by the implanted brains of volunteer soldiers

This 104 page linear adventure uses roughly ninety pages to describe twelve scenes. There are no specifics, but there are a lot of motivations and backstory. It’s abstracted nonsense about the fallout from some political thing with elf kingdom manipulation or some shit like that. Boring crap.

Sometimes I just wish I could say “It sucks” and move on with my life. There’s this category of adventures that really are disasters, in the most amateurish way. Hubris, I guess. I can get behind some hubris. But, also, Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would’ve hidden from it in terror. I admire someone’s ability to just go out and do it. And I absolutely loathe the result, everything that led up to it, and the fact that I get to pay, literally and figuratively, for the hubris of others.

That’s the opening page. Well, after the table of contents which is in the same style except all of the text is in that blue underlined font, making it even harder to read than a page of fancy font italics on a “fun” tan background image. Did you look at it? Did you look at it and say “Yup, that’s easy to read!”

Great. A column of read-aloud to kick things off. Ingenuity of its people. Got it. Time for a city adventure. I love me a city adventure! It’s one of my favorites! The adventure immediately transitions from that read-aloud to you waking up on an airship.

I don’t know. You’re on your way to another city. That’s like all you get. There’s no adventure between that meaningless starting read-aloud and that “night two” start of the adventure. No boarding of the airship or reasons or anything like that. I guess this will have to do, as well as being told the food is expensive and bad: “The first two days aboard the Airship is rather uneventful! The captain is friendly and more than happy to chat with the passengers. The crew are respectful, but in a hurry, as their duties keep them pretty busy while underway. Addison Buchard and CPT Greene keep to themselves as much as possible, trying to keep out of sight. Addison is shy if approached, and CPT Greene is standoffish, but not hostile or rude.” Abrupt transitions from scene to scene. Overwrought text. And a massive railroad. I guess you’re taking the fucking parachutes, ey?

This one scene, of the twelve, is a good example of the text and playstyle. You have a rather abrupt read-aloud to begin things. Then there’s a very general description of the scene, the number of bandits and their objectives, etc. You are essentially seeing all of that in the screencap above. Then there are like five pages of maps of the ship, one of which is a small keyed map with a very general overview of each section. “Main Foyer: This connects the Crew Quarters, the stair to the Passenger Quarters, and the Mess Deck together. The Door to the Crew Quarters is kept locked at all times. DC 18 DEX will unlock it.” It’s not really a keyed encounter map, and, for the play style envisioned, it’s probably the right amount of detail. About a page for everything and a brief enough overview to get the feel. But the ACTUAL encounter is not specific at all and, i think, is essentially just an idea padded out to a column of text. There are bandits. They want to capture the chick and will destroy the ship if it looks like the characters are fighting instead of fleeing. I mean, that’s the basic scene, just expanded. That’s seven pages to describe “the principals jump out with a parachute during a bandit attack.”

Everything is this very loose description of a situation surrounded by a very strict railroad so you can get from point a to point twelve. I’m normally down for a situation, but in this case it doesn’t feel like a situation. Or, perhaps, it doesn’t feel like the text supports the situation. It’s just TOO loose. I recall one of the early 4e adventures that had a complex of cave rooms and a monster in it with the party negotiating the entire area with its difficult terrain and so on. Like a traditional cavern map but with a only one creature. The minotaur in his maze or one of those “trick” levels, like the mirror maze level with a robot and laser beams. Not a room as a set piece but rather the level as a set piece. Except this isn’t a set piece. It’s too loose for that. And it’s not a sandbox, it’s too constrained for that. Here’s a genericish map of an airship. There are twice as many bandits as characters. Go! “It’s entirely up to the GM how many Terravore
occupy each mound, and if any mounds are vacant.” Well, good thing I bought an adventure And, yet, there is tons of backstory. And motivations. And NPC description details that don’t really matter.

Leaving aside the plot based/scenes/chapters issue, it’s the situations here that are frustrating. I get situations. I love them. And open-ended play and a sandbox. Great. If I squint hard I can tell that the designer is TRYING to support the DM. There’s an attempt to explain what is going on so the DM can improvise and adapt. But the emphasis is on the wrong spots. Those motivation and background parts should be shorter and the encounters/situations more specific. It’s too open-ended where it needs specificity and too wordy in the parts that are to support “off the rails” play. The formatting also doesn’t contribute to locating information easily for the off the rails portion.

This is $25 at DriveThru. The preview is the first six pages. That’s really just a table of contents and some background information, the first six pages. It should show a chapter, from start to finish, to give a potential buyer an idea of what they will be handling.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/532342/aoethera-cataclysm-book-1-for-castles-crusades?1892600

By Onslaught Six, Roz Leahy
Tidal Wave Games
OSR
Levels 1-9

[…] Deep beneath Castle Gygar was a thriving maze of magical creatures. These levels would shift and expand at times, as if the dungeon were taking a breath. The divine magic of Lord King Gygar was no match for the chaotic energy of his dungeon’s denizens, and, before long, the Castle was abandoned. The land of Jotun has been without proper rule for hundreds of years now. Castle Gygar’s ruins stand as a kind of warning now, a warning against digging too deep in search of power. For the foolish few who now and then decide to ignore this lesson, a p

This 64 page digest adventure fits in a megadungeon with twelve levels and about 25 rooms per level. It’s got a kind of disconnected vibe between the rooms, a very terse minimalism, and some videogame overtones. It does hit at a consistent mediocre level. I just find it hard to sustain interest.

Well, it got done. Which is more than most large projects can say. I’m going to struggle, somewhat, with describing what this is. “It’s the ruins of Castle Gygar, it’s dungeons anyway. Duh!” But, more than that, the kind of disconnected nature of the levels. But, perhaps, I should start with the room description style. That’s a weird place to start but I think it kind of is the origin story to everything going on in this, in one way or another. 

You can, from that collection of room entries in the screencap, tell that the rooms are pretty terse. We’re talking twelve to a digest place terse. “Four +1 Spears hang on the wall, glowing brightly as they are approached. A small vent conceals a low tunnel to 1.3” Two sentences. Quite terse. Not the more evocative sentences ever written, by far, but also it’s hard to slam them for padding. 🙂  So. Why are the sentences not longer? Why select this ultra-terse format? It’s twelve levels and over three hundred rooms. Size can’t be the factor, the entire product is long. Unless 64 pages is a logic publishing format that it needs to fit in to? In which case … why twelve levels instead of ten with longer descriptions? I feel like I’m missing something, a gimmick or something. It just feels artificially constrained, although I can point to no real reason for that feeling other than the very short descriptions in a very large number of rooms … and thus implicitly a large page count. I do appreciate a terse format, but, not so terse that we lose the room proper. In the grand scheme of things a padded out product would be shittier than this, this kind of terse but ok would be neutral and an evocative terse description would be the ideal. So, first do no wrong is taken care of. I just can’t see why the word didn’t end up somewhere better. The rooms come off as barren.

And, more than that, they come off disconnected. Why are the spears there? I don’t mean backstory. There’s an ogre nearby. And imps. Gargoyles. Beastmen. The Hunger. That’s a lot of monsters. A zoo almost. In the rooms surrounding Ye Olde Glowing Speare Roome. I don’t need a historically accurate number of farmers to yeomen in a village but I do need the vibe to seem plausible. Why are they still there? And, for that matter, why the fuck are all of those monsters living so close to each other? This is why we have lairs, and zones of control, and themes areas in dungeons. It keeps this kind of monster zoo thing from happening. There are dead zones. And dead zones between areas can have secrets. Like four glowing spears hanging from the walls. So, it all just kind of comes off as disconnected. Sure, it’s a room and the description does not overstay its welcome. But, also, the description isn’t really bringing the room to life in any way AND the overall design and placement of the room doesn’t really contribute to a bigger picture. On the first level the leader of the beastmen, a single orc, sits on this throne, his 3000gp(!!) treasure in the next room. He’s flanked by his beastmen guards. So, I guess two of them? Pretty nice fucking loot. And no beastmen lairs or orc lairs or really ANY other monsters nearby. Just dude on his skull throne with his two bros. There’s no real level vibe. Or zone vibe. Or room vibe. Just do you thing in THIS room and move on. It’s not even full of special rooms, like, a set piece after a set piece like the Tower of Gygax con game specials. I don’t know, a more boring Stonehell barbican?

And there are quite clearly come videogame play loops. You can convert temples to your own god, which will give you a small attack bonus You can rind relics which are like one-time-use spell scrolls. You can go through a twelve step process to find a +5 sword on the last level that detects secrets doors and can cast list and cure wounds. Which, frankly, seems a bit of a rip off after twelve levels and the hoops you have to jump through. It feels like maybe its a way to help with that interconnection issue and lack of purpose, but, you also don’t really seem to know WHY, to what end, all of the mini tasks are leading to. And if you don’t know you are making a decision then the tension around making that decision is lost. 

And, of course “The door to 0.8 is locked by the Gold Key (0.15).” How much more of a videogame flavor do you need than that?

Monster summary in the back, along with wanderer tables, which is a good idea. No monster descriptions, which is a bad idea. The map does denote which rooms have internal light sources, which I enjoy to help me run a level. But, also, the rooms try to denote it also by placing the text in either white or black font, which I think  makes it busy. Not to the point it’s illegible or anything, I just don’t think it does what the designer wanted, it’s already on the map, and, worst of all, it annoys me. 🙂 

Things are just not … vibing together the way I would like. It really needs a rug to tie the dungeon together. Outside level. Dragon level. It’s just, overall and individually, not working together toward a common end. Maybe you can sustain long play like that, I don’t think I can. 

This is $10 at DriveThru. There are multiple previews, so, good job with that. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/510225/the-ruins-of-castle-gygar?1892600