tenfootpole.org

By Robert Mills
Trebormills Games
d6? Levels ... Mid?

The situation in Greymarsh has become dire indeed, heroic individuals are needed to rise to the task of defending it. Villages in the Southlands have reported sighting hoards of undead, coming from out of the Deadwood. In addition there are also reports of roving patrols of goblins, orcs and bandits close to the Wizard’s tower. Bertrum Greymane the fifth hasn’t been heard from in two months. It is imperative that contact is re-established with the hermit-like mad mage. Find out what is going on with Bertrum and if he is alive make contact with him, then report back to Greyhold.

This 32 page adventure uses eight pages to describe about seventeen rooms in an underground complex. You’ll ‘enjoy’ stabbing things, stabbing things more in rooms with overly simplistic descriptions, but still padded out. Note that there is no Wizard’s Tower. Or really a hex crawl either?

Ok, undead, orcs and goblins are coming out of the Deadwood. That’s, oh, ten days horse ride away, thirty or so days on foot. Frank the Wizzo lives on the edge of the woods and no one has heard from him. Pretty please go check on him? Ok man, we got a hex crawl! A thirty day hex crawl as a part of the plot? Or a ten day hex crawl on horse? That’s a bit strange, given the urgency that is being communicated. But, sure, ok. 

Said hex crawl involves you rolling on wandering monster tables twice a day to have a potential encounters. That’s it. No hexes to explore. No sites to discover. ROll twice a day and have your wandering encounter. I don’t know that I would use the words hex crawl to describe that. I guess its technically accurate? Maybe? Maybe it’s just a Hex Travel adventure and Hex Crawl means what we traditionally think of it as? Anyway, lame, adds nothing, boring. The adventure suggests that perhaps as many three gaming sessions could be taken up with the journey to the wizards tower, as a hex crawl. Again, that’s not quite what I would expect?

Congrats! You’re now at the wizards tower! It’s being besieged by hundreds of orcs, goblins and undead. Eventually you will stumble across a magic telepathy session that tells you to go to some ruins and explore them. Thus, the adventure of The Wizards Tower is not actually IN the Wizards Tower. It’s in a dwarf ruin nearby. *sigh* 

Now we’ve got kind of an Indiana Jones scene, from Raiders, where the nazis are digging one desert site out and Dr Jones is going in to another site, the real one. Except the siegers are tunneling  in and the party has found the front doors, so to speak. Except there’s no real above ground portion to this, not the big mining operation for the siegers, or, really, any interesting details of the siege at all. Lame.

We now get to the dungeon. Inside we shall be dazzled by such descriptions as “The Orcs bypassed the sealed door by tunnelling into the chamber. Anyone discovering this tunnel will be faced by a picket guard of 2 goblins at the entrance, plus the individuals in room 5.”The Orcs bypassed the sealed door by tunnelling into the chamber. Anyone discovering this tunnel will be faced by a picket guard of 2 goblins at the entrance, plus the individuals in room 5.”In fact, almost every room has a “Bertram did this to room” section to it. FUll of padding and backstory and useless detail. “There is a sealed pit in this room (treat it as magically sealed by Bertrum, unless you have added your own extra tunnels, in which case it could connect to those)” or some padding like “Should the PC’s touch or pick up the treasure they risk angering the guardian of the tomb.” That’s a nothing statement. And that sort of padding is everywhere.

Interactivity involves stabbing things. Lots of things. I think there’s a spider you can talk to, but that’s about it. Just stab things. But, no real order of battle, of course. Maybe a note here or there that the dudes in room 5 are alerted, which is better than nothing I guess.

“A former council room for meetings between the Dwarven elders and visitors. Now used by Bertrum to store furniture and unimportant documents. The room is currently being ransacked by three goblins” That right there is what you are paying your money for. Three gaming session to get to that. You enjoy that right there.

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages and shows you nothing, thus, an ineffective preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/472770/gma2-the-wizard-s-tower?1892600

By Luiz Eduardo Ricon
Hexplore Publishing 
OSE
Levels 3-5

The shimmering shaft of the tower rose frostily in the stars. In the sunlight it shone so dazzlingly that few could bear its glare, and men said it was built of silver.

This 48 page adventure uses ten pages to describe about thirty rooms in the titular tower, the rest being devoted to the now public domain short story. It’s got some ok descriptions for various rooms, but the encounters are relatively prosaic, with substantial editing gaps throughout the rather short ten pages of the actual work. No Fantastic! for you today.

Sorry man, I’m unfamiliar with old fantasy novels. Or, most modern fantasy for that matter, beyond LotR and the Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn series. I’m a SciFI boy. But, on the plus side, you’ll get no glaze in my eyes from nostalgia. The intro to this says it’s inspired by the story but not a copy of it, so, we’ll review it like that: ignoring the story and just looking at the adventure, proper. All I got to go on is that tower scene in the Conan movie.

The map here is relatively simplistic. You get nine levels of a tower, with a couple of rooms per level. One level is underground. There’s supposed to be a couple of walled gardens around the tower, but we get no map of it. The map editing is sloppy, with no key numbers on the map beyond level one of the tower. Entrances are … weird? The map notes doors on levels one … and the key says they can’t be opened. Windows on level one are mentioned as well. But, the garden section notes only a tunnel from the basement and a balcony on the top floor, as well as “concealed windows” on level one. I don’t know how you conceal a large window, but, whatever. It’s sloppy work. You’re looking at one way up and one way down on most levels. Not exactly the most interesting for an exploration, but, alas, thus is the fate of all towers, it seems. 

Treasure, magic treasure anyway, is quite generic. +1 shield and +1 sword and 12k in gold in the main treasure chamber. You’ve got the black lotus/yellow lotus shit as well, so, I guess there’s that. This does not lend to the air of The Fantastic. It comes off as boring. The guards, as well, are kind of poorly done. There’s no real order of battle, beyond one section that notes a fleeing cook may summon some guards. There’s no real “infiltration” section in the walled gardens, beyond a note to roll for wandering guards. You do get to fight six 5HD lions, so, there’s that. Or, sneak by them, I guess? But, there’s not really any framing for that kind of play, at all. That’s a pretty major miss. And the editing throughout is sloppy, beyond the map/key numbers; referring to things on the wrong levels, for example. 

Descriptions are above average. We get a bar scene that is “flickering of candles, the PCs are surrounded by smoke, muffled laughter, scantily clad men and women servants, and the overpowering scent of ale, wine, and sweat.” That’s a decent visual for a bar. And then a “bloated man, flushed and sweaty, claps cheerfully …” along with his wicked grin and his “don’t be shy my lovelies!” This is the kind of writing I like to see. Terse and evocative. We get “crude moss-covered stairs going up” and “Dimly lit chamber, smell of blood and urine. Hooks and chains dangling on the walls. A bronze sarcophagus (S) covered in iron spikes standing in a corner.” I’m not sure how the main stairs are moss-covered, but whatever, it’s still a stairs description, and those almost never get one in an adventure. Dimly lit, smells of blood and urine, that’s pretty good. Above average, to be sure. It’s not always doing this well, but, generally, it does ok. Living up to Howard, no doubt?

The encounters, proper, though leave a lot to be desired. A ghoul in that torture chamber iron maiden, for example. Or a raving madman. No real monster descriptions are present, which is a major miss. And most of the combat encounters are just a sudden combat. There’s not much in the way of sneaking, or in puzzle solving. Maybe a trap here and there, but animated armor is not the end all and be all of an encounter. The monsters are mostly generic with no real descriptions and the on-combat stuff is a simple “drug gas” trap or something of the like. There’s no real sense of wonder in any of them. The final encounter, with some alien dude and a large gem is an exception, but also I assume this is from the story?

This is a simple tower map with rather normal and somewhat boring encounters. While the rooms are somewhat evocatively described, the encounters proper lack that thus come off as just another generic combat encounter. There’s not a lot of interactivity beyond combat and an occasional drug trap. Substantial editing issues and a lack of care in the final proof are quite evident; I can overlook a lot of that in an adventure but this one is a little too heavy in that area. The mundane treasure has an attempt made at a decent description, although the magic treasure is just generic. No real framing for play other than hacking. I’d skip it.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages. You get to see the opening bar scene. It really needed to include a tower level as well.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/479223/the-tower-of-the-elephant-a-classic-sword-sorcery-story-adapted-for-old-school-rpgs?1892600

Ancient Sage Games
Self Published
OSR
Levels 1-3

The village of Veknis has a problem – crops are dying and villagers are disappearing. Suspicions abound that the Witch of Chimney Rock is responsible for these misfortunes. Heroes are needed to discover the truth, venture into the primeval Forest of Legressia, and rid Veknis of the scourge plaguing the town, potentially uncovering a far more dangerous looming threat in the process!

This 67 page adventure, a conversion from 5e, presents a jumble of over-invested encounters that the party has no opportunity to overcome. In spite of a few interesting encounters, that near the definition of set pieces, the overall effect is one of wasted effort in a world in which everyone is simply misunderstood.

There are many things to complain about in this adventure, examples of bad design that may, in some cases, be the platonic example of what not to do. You show up in a village for hook reasons. Those hooks are the usual suspects: someone has hired you/asked you to look in to something. Ye olde quest board, active again! These hooks, and almost every one like them, are mere pretexts and show a lack of agency for the party. You don’t do something because you want to. You do something because you have been hired/sent to do something by someone else. This reminds me so much of the many pretexts in YA lit in particular: You are special, or, The progenitors came before. Seldom do we see someone who just overthrows the system because they want to. No, you were destined to do so. A hook in which the party ARE the progenitors, in which they forge their own destiny, would be much more preferable to these. (Insert the usual commentary bitching about hooks not being needed.) 

And then comes the village. 25 pages worth of village, I think? Lots and lots of people described. Lots and lots of businesses described. Events described. And almost none of it is meaningful to the adventure. Overly described NPCs are the word of the day, along with the needlessly described business description. There is nothing special here. THis is just a generic fantasy village. One of the events is a priest who gives his sacrificial hers to some yours fish and smoking them. I guess this shows he’s kind? But this is not a meaningful part of the adventure and, of course, take us WAYYYYYY too much space. 

And WAYYYYYYY too much space is a notable thing in this adventure. The core of the adventure is your journey through the mysterious forest on you way to the titular Chimney Rock to find the titular witch. You are presented with three paths through the forest that you can take to get there. Each one will have a handful of encounters, in a linear fashion. Choosing one means not choosing the other two, and thus not encountering the other two sets of encounters. We see here a lack of understanding of what kind of adventure this is. If this were a story adventure then we may not have a problem with a linear encounter set. It’s not my thing, but, for those types of adventures I think we can acknowledge that the linear set of encounters could work for them. On the other side of the spectrum may be an adventure with a forest map in which you wander around in a kind of free form manner, having encounters along the way to the rock. You might, I suppose, encounter ALL of the areas in the forest in an adventure like this. You, maybe not. 

And this, I think, leads to the discussion of how long an encounter should be. If the party could possibly encounter, say, thirty locations, then I would not expect each location to be a long one. I would expect them to be on the shorter side of things. As a designer we’re not investing a long word count on something that the party may not encounter. But, if we’re looking at a kind of linear set of encounters, with a plot type game, I might invest a little more heavily in the, say, five encounters the party will discover. (Needless to say, I should hope that in both cases they are done well, be it terse and evocative or formatted for use!) 

But, what if I write a page, or a page and half, for each of thirty or so encounters, most of which will probably not be encountered by the party? What then? My effort wasted, n things that will never see the light of day. And that’s what this adventure does. It doesn’t know if its a linear story adventure or a free form wander. Thus utr creates each path, with the encounters on each lasting a page or a page and half or more. Two third od which will never be seen. I would not, also, that they the writing for them is not particularly evocative or the encounters formatted well for use at the table. It’s hunting text and highlighter time!

This is not to say that the core of the encounters are all bad. There are more than a few of these which tend to the situations side of the spectrum rather than the brief encounter side. And situations are a MAGNIFICENT thing for an adventure. A hag in a hut, not immediately hostile, or a rickety bridge over a ravine, complete with goblins to make things harder. These are way overly described, and the formatting used works against comprehension it is so prevalent. But, also, there’s a druid going the same place you are … to turn himself in to a lich. You don’t know that. But, also you might end up with a little ally in the future, who never leaves his forest. “Yeah, I know a dude which might help. Also, do you have any trees left over from Arbor day? Don’t ask.” That’s a great little after the fact outcome. Or, an owlbear encounter in which he’s eating a dwarf, still alive. Wanna be TPK’d? Or wanna watch the dwarf die? Or, maybe, figure out how to lure it away? There are some pretty decent ideas in this, just WAY overly described for what they are. A ghost child you can district by playing with it’s toys with it. Great!

And looking ta that ghost child, the initial read-aloud ends with “The figure whispers, insistent, beckoning you to come and play…” Which is a pretty great example of telling instead of showing. 

The conversion here is obvious, with trade dress being 5e, skill checks galore, and the final treasure being  “43 cp, 78 sp, 121 gp.” Shitty conversion is shitty and it’s prevalent throughout.  Did I mention the milestone leveling?

Throw away the vast majority of the village, rework the forest encounters, trim a lot of words and rewrite to be more evocative and for the formatting to be less cluttered and actually help at the table, while doing a proper 1e/BX conversion. Then you could have a decent little woods adventure. IN which no one is to blame for anything and everyone is mind–controlled, undead, an insect/construct or so on. Even the bandits are revolutionaries. 

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is the first 29 pages. Enjoy page after page of village and maybe two ofthe generic wilderness encounters. But the haunted orphanage is there on preview page 22, as well as the druid/lich guy at the end. CHeck those out for an idea of how concept doesn’t quite meet the road.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/478705/osr-adventure-the-witch-of-chimney-rock?1892600

By Matthew Evans
Mithgarthr Entertainment
Castles & Crusades
Levels 4-6

Charcuterie in Nefford may never be the same… A butcher was supposed to receive a large shipment of salt from the Dwarves of Kamoz Kamendom two weeks ago and has heard neither hide nor hair from them. He’s willing to pay for someone to find out what happend to his friend and business partner, Harbem Bottlebringer. The road wasn’t easy for the Dwarves, nor will it be for those seeking them…

This 44 page adventure describes a linear 40 hex wilderness journey with several side caves to explore. There are some situations and details here that are quite above average, showing some interesting non game centric thought behind them. But, also, It pads things out, is linear, maybe a little treasure light, and doesn’t revel in its situations quite enough for my tastes.

Strap on boys! The local butcher didn’t get his salt from Moria and wants you to go track em down and find out what happened! There’s only one road, so off you get, traveling 200 miles away to Moria to get your 500gp reward. I wonder just how much he paid for that salt, anyway? What is that, a forty day journey? I admire putting the place 200 miles away. Anyway, you walk down the road, with each hex having something in it. Sometimes it’s just a note about weather. Sometimes it’s a traveler. And sometimes it’s a monster ambush. That’s all the adventure is. Travel to a hex that you don’t have a choice entering or not, have the encounter, and then move to the next hex and repeat. Not exactly the height of player agency. But, let’s look at those hexes.

Hex 1, six miles or so at most from the city, is a cave by the road with smoke coming from it. Full of flinds and gnolls. Uh. I’d like to lodge a complaint with the local magistrate about the dereliction of the lord of the city of Nefford and its city fathers. Yeah, I’m being an ass, but, also, it’s less than six miles from a major city. Anyway, what I wanted to focus on was the description details here. “The smell of wet dog wafts out, mingled with the smoke which attracted the PCs to these caves.” We can see, in that first line of the first cave encapsulated both what I like and dislike. The smell of wet dog and smoke. Wafting out, as the initial description said. Great description. I think of a craggy hillside cave and smoke coming out of it, the smell of campfires and wet dog. I think it’s great. And then “which attracted the PCs to these caves.” And, of course, I loathe padding. And padding there is indeed in these hexes. Maybe a third or a little less is outright padding, with maybe a third more being less than tightly edited text that makes me frown and maybe a third representing some pretty decent descriptions. Hmmm, no, I take that back. In some cases we get some decently evocative text and in others we get a decently good situation description. Hex five has us meeting a human peddler, a woman, who tells of a cyclops lair nearby, with nothing to see in it, it’s dangerous. She’s anxious to leave. Inside the lair (more on it in a bit) the party finds the body of a beautiful woman, recently dead. “This is the body of Tara Featherlace, a beautiful brunette who was murdered by Teofil [that chick you met on the road]  with a leather awl after becoming the subject of her jealousy” That’s fun! I love it when the real world creeps in to an adventure. It’s a little abrupt, there’s not much going on here beyond what I just typed. It’s like finding a dude with a bloody dagger standing over someone dressed as a king. Uh. Ok. Now what? There are no complications here, no follow ups. You can track the chick down and punish her, I guess (which the adventure takes a paragraph to describe) but that’s all. More on this disconnection in a bit.

The inside of the cave, an old Cyclops lair, is a good example of wll that’s right, and wrong, with the world. Giant bronze door off its hinges. The dead chick on the floor. The main chamber, rather lage, has collapsed and is sunken in to the floor about twenty feet and is more cave like now. A decaying corpse of the cyclops and two pet bears, someone having already killed them. And, then, above the cave floor, an old doorway to the rest of the abandoned dwarven outpost the cyclops took over. A hidden area! I really like this. A lot. I like the abandoned outpost, being taken over by the cyclops. The fact he’s dead and decaying. The dead chick.That’s all great. The collapsed floor and “hidden” area. The world here is lived in. That comes through loud and clear. It adds to the specificity and gets the players thinking. 

And this is something that happens over and over and over again in this adventure. Yeah, there are ambushes by monsters. And maybe things are a little too exciting, hex to hex, for a 1e adventure. And  maybe they have a little too little treasure for my tastes. And the fucking encounters. For all of my love for that lived in feel, they are also SO abrupt at times. The text focuses on the wrong things, the mundanity, the  mechanics, what the party might do, padded out phrases. Instead it should be offering tantalizing hints of where the encounter could go. Teasing the DM to expand it further. The fucking actress you meet. The asshole elves that let you pass. There’s nothing more BEHIND those encounters.

And, more to the point, they seem entirely random. I mean that in a way that they don’t seem to be related to the plot of the adventure. Sure, a few of them are. You can find some dead dwarves, or maybe a living one, in a couple of the encounters. But, otherwise, these are almost disconnected from the adventure at hand, finding the dwarves. I guess you have to investigate every game and demihuman lair, to check to see if THEY were the ones who killed the dwarves, or if it was the ones in the next hex up. Or the hex after that. Or the hex after that. Don’t get me wrong here, it’s not necessary that every encounter lead to the inevitable conclusion. Randos gonna rando, after all. But, also, as isolated pinpoints there is something lacking here. Both in the ‘main’ adventure and in the scenarios. I can imagine a possible world in which the actress encounter, or the dead chick encounter, had a little more legs under it, building a bit. Perhaps adding some intrigue, for any definition of that word. But that’s not really to be found here.

Some interesting ideas in this, in places. And a touch of evocative writing here and there. And, also, it’s padded out quite a bit with both empty phrases and with meaningless detail when more evocative and loaded content could have been included. Treasure feels light as well. And, of course, the disconnected nature of the encounters is not quite where I’d like to see things. It’s a balancing act, between plot and non-plot, but for a world that is so lived in, it feels strangle disconnected from itself. But, also, it doesn’t earn my eternal hate.

And then there’s hex 31.08.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages and shows you several hexes. Very good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/480715/mecc6-the-salt-shipment?1892600

By Luka Rejec
WTF Studio
OSR? Generic/Universal?

The snows are alive. A soft, cold spirit courses through them. Her lace threads the world; watching, drinking, listening, stroking, soothing, killing. Her touch is soft and icy. She is Winterwhite, the daughter of the Waterdrinker and the Northwind, and she is a terrible god. An avatar of ice and hunger, of visions and death.

This 114 page ‘sandbox’ is an empty shell. Devoid of almost anything useful to a DM, it is one idea that is not fleshed out in any meaningful way for play. All concept and no delivery. I am not the fuck amused.

Didn’t Luka write something that I liked? I think so? This thing though, has issues. While it advertises itself as a kind of sandbox, it might be more correct to say that it’s got some ideas that you can dump in to game. There is a small isolated valley in the mountains. A few generations back some settlers came there and found people already there, a rougher folk. They were attacked and driven back to a cave, where they made a sacrifice to the spirit of winter. As long as they do this continually then everything is ok. Recently, the ruler skipped a sacrifice. The setting starts in the fall, goes through winter, and then spring never comes … unless a sacrifice is offered. Winter will last a year. Dumped in to this are some factions. The aristos/rulers of the valley, the first settlers lurking in their hamlets, some werewolf like people with some undead at their call, and The Old Architects that are a kind of mythic people asleep and perhaps waking up. While the Baronials get a few more words, you now know just about as much as I do about these groups. There is really no description of them beyond that. There is a nice little table, for each, though that describes some portents and events that can happen as each faction waxes or wanes. These are nice little guidelines to show their power and drop in to a game. 

And drop in to a game you will. This is meant as the backdrop for a different game, I think. These are events and factions to interact with as you run your normal game in the valley, is what I get the sense of. As strict time records are being kept, winter approaches and things happen as a faction gans or loses power. This is the strongest part of the book. As, oh, eight to ten pages, it provides a good backdrop of things that could happen in the homebases. This kind of thing is great in a setting; as a guideline for making your world more interesting and providing some downtime activities that may lead to more.

A huge portion of the book is devoted to escaping the valley. A mechanism is described using a standard deck of cards, with each suit representing something, like mountains or rivers, and higher values representing more danger. Potentially. These are not actually encounters as much as they are ideas. For example “A stumbling man in a heavy parka and bespoke city shoes is making for the valley. His marten fur cap smells strongly of pomade. Despite the stubble on his cheeks, his curled moustaches still follow the last Eastern City fashions. He keeps mumbling about a hotel in Pey Holzey. His watch is a jewelled TPK Scheephouse with seven complications. “ Is someone you might meet. I’m not sure there is much to do there. Make an ally … during your minigame on the way out of the valley? Or, your ropes get frayed and you have disadvantage on all climbing checks until they are repaired. There is a lack of a situation in most of these encounters. I don’t see the adventure. 

The settlements and people are not described. The factions are not described. There are not really guidelines for adding some verve to things. This is barest of frameworks for a setting. The portents and events like things on the timelines are good, but the supplement could be JUST that and you would not lose anything for your game .. because there’s nothing else to this. 

And then we combine that with something like “They are the oppressed whose yearning for freedom and dignity has become a thing of twisted envy, hatred, despair, greed, longing, hunger, loathing, self-destruction mixed with unrequited love—the anti-eros, the thanatos that comes forth in this long dark” Uh huh. That’s inappropriate for anything other than a political pamphlet. And then, at the end, we have the ever popular eye rolling “narrate your ending” piece “A gruelling escape leaves the heroes scarred and hurt. What nightmares of Winterwhite plague your dreams? Why do you feel like something darker stirred beneath the ice? How do you cope with your trauma? Were there many you betrayed on the way? Why will nobody believe you, when you talk of ice ghouls?” I know, I know, this is personal taste. But, also, effort when in to those things, effort that could have been spent on developing the valley and providing more situations to occur within the setting. 

I am not amused. 

This is $13 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages. You get a chance to se ethe winter spirit table of waxes and wanes. A view of a card result would have been ice as well, although nothing is going to prepare you for the lack of a framing to have a game in.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/339587/longwinter-referee-s-book?1892600

By David Lewis Johnson
Self Published
OSR
Levels 1-5

Who is Grandpappy Cromdar? Grandpappy Cromdar is a battle hardened warrior, a seasoned monster rancher, a salty landlubber, a prancing princess, a slap-happy crazy old coot. Where decent, respectable fighting men might opt to establish a stronghold or build a trade empire, Grandpappy juked left and went with “Converting a dungeon in to a family friendly zoo”. He is me. He is you.

This 52 page adventure uses about eighteen pages to describe about a hundred rooms on three levels. Minimal descriptions, a zany premise, and ‘Cromdar is a pervert’ tone are off putting and better found in a Gamma World adventure. The map can’t save this one.

Hang in there man. Remember S3? Remember that wilderness level with observation overlooks and attached maintenance? That was great! So this could be great also! It’s not, but, that’s not the point. It COULD have been great! And thusly are Bryce’s dreams made.

Comdar was an adventurer. He retired and started a zoo in a dungeon and sells tickets. THe dungeon is. I guess, perfect for his zoo. Anyway, things are bad inside, with the creatures out of their cages and running amok. There’s no real hook beyond “go inside and have fun” so don’t start looking for one in an adventure with a sex swing and Asteroids game in it. 

The map is decent and shares similarities with the S3 Levels. You’ve got the main level, with some admin offices and empty cages as well as a wide open wilderness area with a lake. The level under that has more maintenances and such, with some under da sea detail. The level above is the “sky” with some offices, zipline platform, sex dirigible, the top of a volcano and so on. The traditional room/key dungeon areas can be a little linear in places, but, then again, a hallway is linear, and zoos funnel people in directions. I’m not mad at the map, or the ziplines and personal submarines that make exploration fun. 

But I am mad at the lack of overview text for the vistas. At certain points you get to stand on a platform and survey your surroundings. To look out and take in the majesty of the wilderness. There is no text to help the DM with that. A volcano, an airship, ziplines, a waterfall, and so on. Nothing of the sort here. Which means, as a DM, you left searching through the text looking at a lot of keys, flipping back and forth, trying to put one together during play. This is, obviously, from a lack of playtesting; it would be impossible to escape that without the issue having come up. 

The monsters here are all new, with not even an intellect devourer making an appearance. And they are a bizarre bunch. This contributes to the Gamma World vibe much more than to the D&D vibe, with them being intelligent and having chimeratic features. I love it when a new monsters description starts with “this is a strange and bizarre creature.” Yup, they all are man, they all are. 

The room descriptions are just about as basic as you can get and not be Vampire Queen. Basic, but with a few details, at least one of which will be “look at me ma! Aren’t I zany?!” The first Aid Station tells us that there is: “An examination table occupies the northeast corner of the this room. An emergency aid kit sites undisturbed on a counter next to a wash basin. Bags of syringe-filled biohazard bags have been stacked against the west wall.” The detail here, of the description, is quite basic. The table is NE. A wash basin, and so on. There’s nothing really evocative about it at all, just a basic factual description. Not good. The table and wash basin, fo example, serve no purpose, in terms of adventure, in the room. We could assume them , or not, and the adventure would go right along without an issue. We know that a bedroom has a bed in it. And this will be the norm in this adventure. A very minimal description is basic facts in it and nothing evocative, with something “wacky” in it. lIke a wall full of syringe bags. Or a sex swings. Or the monsters playing soccer with a head. 

Interactivity is almost nonexistent beyond stabbing things. Yes, you can zipline or use a submarine. We might, though, call these “using the stairs.” Beyond this very basic level of interactivity you will not find a lot to fuck around with. Go some place, have a wacky encounter with a deadly monster, and then go to the next place. You will not be encountering treasure in this adventure. 

Someone had an idea. They stated it for the OSR instead of Gamma World. But, even as a Gamma World adventure it would be lacking, with exploration elements minimal and interactivity close to non-existent. And, of course, adventures that try to be zany never work. In the future, I hope I die before I wake.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages and shows you nothing but the intro. Good luck with that. It needs to show actual encounter pages.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/134672/grandpappy-cromdar-s-whizbang-zoo?1892600

By W. F. Smith
Prismatic Wasteland
OSE
Levels ... ?

The Keep once loomed on the margins of civilization. It is now the center of culture and commerce.

 Each year, the Keep celebrates the Raves of Chaos to commemorate the brave heroes who gave their lives to rid the nearby caves of vile monsters. Their sacrifice cleared the way for the Keep to expand to its current size and scale, the envy of all humankind. The Monarch drained the royal coffers to pay for a powerful antidote, but it never reached their lips. The caravaners say it must have gotten mixed up in the deliveries to the Keep’s many pubs. Despite their illness, the Monarch was able to muster the energy to order the execution of every caravaner, ale draper, ale tunner and ale taster in the Keep.

This sixty page presents twenty bars with the barest of framings for an adventure. The bars are magnificent, in a gonzo sort of way, with tropes galore and a decent homage to The Keep. But the thing is without enough direction to form an adventure with, in any but the barest of definitions of that word.

The Keep is now all grown up. The city is massive now and the lands civilized. You’ve got to think of this like a mashup of Ankh-Morpork with a healthy dose of all of the humanoids inhabiting it. It channels  that magical ren–faire vibe and humanoids vibe without going over the edge in forced happy land where everyone gets along that those settings do famously badly. Instead there is a healthy dose of cynicism here that colours everything. And the setting is pushed in to something akin to gonzo, but fantasy themed. No one is going to bat an eye at a tower with some long hair hanging out and a wheel spinning gold. Not fairy-tale, this is firmly rooted in fantasy. It’s just that everything is in this. 

First, a brief divergence in to character creation. I mention it only because it is mostly just character backgrounds on a table to roll on But very solid one. The Orphaned Heir starts with a mansion and a set of black leather armor. If you can’t do something with that, in a one-shot, then you don’t deserve to play D&D. “My parents are dead!” That’s a hilight, but most of them are quite solid as well. And that’s what you need for one shot backgrounds, something for a player to riff off of without telling them how to play their character.

The Cult of Chaos is now reformed, in to the Church of Chis, or, as the adventure states “Formerly the “Cult of Evil Chaos,” the Church has made efforts to rebrand, pivoting to a less overtly sinister image.” And therein we get a taste of the tone that is prevalent throughout. The adventurers that cleared the caves are called murderers, but, also, with regard to the goblins “But the Goblins rarely make the same mistake more than a few dozen times.” And, they are in fact up to evil. As is the cult. I mean church. The skewering goes both ways, as if the Lazy Lich finally realized that hippies ARE actually mean people. The museum keep is referred to as a repository of revisionist history, but the old woman who runs the candy and gingerbread themed dive bar in the woods IS up to some shit also. There are no good guys in this respun Keep setting, and that’s something I can get completely behind as a setting for an adventure.

The dude in charge has been poisoned. He’s going to die within days. The antidote has been misplaced … in a bar shipment someone thinks. And thus folks are looking for it. It’s moving around to different bars, according to a timeline and a series of unfortunate events. During this the annual Rave on the Borderlands is happening. A drunken festival, arranged by the Church of Chaos once a year, in which laws are relaxed. This comes with themed days, laid out like a typical Caves expedition in order of the humanoids, with Gnoll Caves day being having to defeat someone in a fight to get cooked meat, else it’s raw meat for you! It’s a cute mechanism to add some theming to the days in front of the party. It pushes things JUST far enough to maintain some semblance of order while still being strongly themed. Alongside this is an heir to throne looking for the antidote also (or creating his own) and some elections for parliament happening. And this is set inside the expanded keep, grown well past its walls, to encompass the old town, the forest that cant be cut down, the swamps now home to factories, and so on. Good sub-region theming. Zones in the dungeon, yeah?

The bars are the highlight here. Each has quite a short description that is then enhanced by a patrons table and some things that can happen there. Here’s the description for the first one, Granny’s Cottage: “Over the river and through the woods, there is a quaint dive bar. Its walls are gingerbread, and its windows are crystallized sugar. The crone that runs it is in constant good cheer. Pay no mind to the pitch-black smoke billowing from its chimney.” That’s a great description. Note the last line, which is evocative and leads you to a conclusion but doesn’t detail it. That’s exactly what a good description is made of. Your mind fills things in and it leaves the door open for a variety of outcomes. It’s quite short, but sets the scene well. As for granny, proper: “Granny appears as a beautiful maiden each day at sunrise. By noon, she appears as a plump matron. She is a wrinkled crone by sunset. Beginning each midnight, Granny’s skin grows green and her nose sprouts warts” That’s something you can work with as well. Something solid to use. One of the patrons is “A child who was lost in the woods until Granny found them. Now they can stay up as late as they want and eat lots of candy!” Again, short, evocative, and can lead to a variety of outcomes. A witch, or just a nice old lady? Either is possible. And so it goes, from themed drinks, to what is Granny doing, to the various events/situations within the bar. Who’s up to sample the Poison Applitini cocktail?

There are two sins with this adventure. The first is the events within the bars. They lack the driving force of an actual adventure. FOr example, iN grannys “The Woodcutter whittles on their cabin’s porch. Due to a curse, they cannot leave the woods until the Keep’s walls fall down.” WHich is nice, but it doesn’t lead to anything. It’s just a thing that happens. Something weird. Window dressing. And this is the same for almost everything in the events/situations/sidetrecks in the adventure. They are just a decent wandering monster table, meaning not really related to the adventure as a whole. 

And then there’s the adventure proper. You wander about, from bar to bar, looking for where the antidote is today, hoping to stumble across it. There’s not much to lead you to where you should be. Not in the bars. Not in the little events, or the mini-games like the election or goblin subterfuge. As much as I like “A giant spider offers to host a luncheon. Over tea, they lament that passersby keep chucking garbage into their web.” It doesn’t really lead you anywhere. You gotta have something here for the party to latch on to and follow up on and so. Otherwise it’s just a drunken bar crawl. 

And as a drunken bar crawl it’s fucking fantastic. Some of the best fantasy taverns around for window dressing. A great Dungeon Dozen for bars. Farce. Absurdity. But as an adventure? I think not.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages. It’s an assortment of rules (drinking) and the first pages of Granny’s. So, a decent preview, even if you don’t get to see the “Adventure” proper. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/429877/barkeep-on-the-borderlands?1892600