tenfootpole.org

By Daniel Mark
Little Maker Press
OSE
Level 1

For generations, the small village of Edgemere has held a tenuous balance with the Blood Mire. Children grew up knowing the folk tales and warnings about wandering out past the walls alone or at night, about a temple that used to be but had long since been swallowed by the Mire, and the strange and lonely family that had come to build a mansion in the Mire and then disappeared. No one knows what happened to the family, the lights just went out in the Mire one day and that was that.? Fifty years later, the lights are said to be on in the house once more and a strangeness like none have seen before has settling over the area. More are reporting hearing whispers and cries in the Mire late at night and seeing dancing lights when the moon is at its fullest. No one in the village dares enter the Mire in these strange times but now the children are starting to go missing. Grieving families are convinced that it is the lost children that they hear whispering in the Mire. Others believe it’s something much worse. ?

This 51 page adventure describes a multi-level manor home in a swamp. It’s trying, with good interactivity and an attempt at good formatting and evocative descriptions. This is marred, though, by room/key numbering that doesn’t match up and some more minor issues that I’ll give too much emphasis to in the review. I’ll probably regert it  without the room/key numbering issue. Tegal continues to haunt the hobby, for good and ill.

This is supposed to be a gothic horror type thing in a swamp/moor. It tells us as much and you can see where it is trying to go in this direction, sometimes to great effect and generally to lesser. I’m going to pick this thing apart on some fine points, but let’s remember that I think this adventure is generally quite a bit above average. It’s trying hard to make things easy on the DM, using bullet points and so on. (Maybe too much so; there seems to be a new trend to ONLY use bullet points for encounters. That’s not a terrible decision, but I think that a traditional sentence format, with bullets for emphasis, does make more sense, generally.) Writing is generally above average and you can, in places, get some really good mental imagery from places described in just a brief sentence or so. This IS the goal of the Evocative pillar. The ability to shove a strong image in to the DMs head so that they can take the room and run with it using their own imagination. More on that in a bit. I’m going to handwave the interactivity here and just say that it meets my needs. There are some things labeled “Factions” that, while not a traditional faction play that I think of, are more like “motivations of the groups” and can provide some strong roleplay possibilities … even with the blood tree that animates children’s bodies. And this is done in a reasonable way, for all groups, that make sense. I wouldn’t call it a traditional faction element, like is fund in a large underground dungeon, but , close enough. It’s talking an negotiating notes. This sort of talky talky play is combined with traditional puzzles, statues, OBVIOUS TRAPS and so on to give an environment that has more than just killing in it. The way a D&D adventure should be. 

It’s doing another quite interesting thing also. There’s a small village, briefly described to good effect, generally. Then there’s a very short overland thing, to the manor home. But the faction homes of two groups are then described, on about one page each. Even though they are not located on the map. There are way, it would seem, in the manor home, to contact at least one of them (which could lead to the second) if not both. This is quite interesting. It has these two groups, also involved in the backstory, that you MAY not interact with, but there are a couple of ties and it IS possible. And then it spares two pages to give you more on those. Given the propensity of players to break the game, this was a great choice. There’s MORE to explore, interact with, etc, you just have to go looking, and the adventure is there to support the DM in this, but doesn’t over-emphasize it. I might make a comparison to the “After the adventure is over” section of some adventures, noting the implications of the choices the characters made in the particular adventure. It’s supporting the world outside the adventure proper, but not going on and on. It’s a good thing.

The evocative writing is ALMOST good enough for me, and probably good enough for most people. The town, for example, has some shops which are sparsely described. We get a note tat the blacksmiths daughter is missing. Or the general store persons niece is missing. From this we can infer a roleplay style, but the NPC tude, proper, is missing. Just a word or two more would have been appreciated. Distraught. Sullen. Resigned. Something. 

Another example of this are the various room descriptions. They are generally anchored to a concept but, I feel, need just a little bit more to make it over the hump the Best Of land. The Wine Room: “ A small narrow room dominated by wine shelves on either side except for the door on the far end of the western wall.” Lets’ ignore the second clause, with the door, since it just repeats information from the map. (Yes, I know some of you like this. You’re wrong. Words are precious resources. To reuse my analogy, it is POSSIBLE that a story in the Paris Review is not depressing, but we all know that’s not true. Academically it might be possible to include, but in practice it’s an example of the weak writing skills of a designer, not understanding the purpose of the room description or how to use it. Also, Fuck You, I’m right. 🙂

Anyway, “a small narrow room dominated by wine shelves.” Not bad. I get an image. It could be better. Towering wine shelves would evoke something better in my mind. Rickety wine shelves would both evoke something AND provide some implied potential energy, even if not another word was mentioned, mechanically, about collapse. Many adventures could benefit from taking another look at their nouns and verbs and seeing if they can add an adjective/adverb to them to evoke a better mental image, or imply some action/leverage some potential energy. I don’t say that this should be done for EVERY noun (well, ok, I think, yes, you should slave away over every noun and try to add some, at least to see what the impact would be, even if you decide to NOT include it) … if that’s done then you’re in the opposite territory where its obvious that this done mechanically and with rigor. Rigor is good … a vision if good … but you need to know when to bend it/break it/diverge. It’s in SERVICE of something and that end goal can never be lost sight of.

There are other descriptive gaps also. One faction has a holy symbol left behind at one encounter. “Their religious symbol is laying …” is all we get. I odn’t believe it is ever described, anywhere in the adventure, and even if it were it should have still been included in that sentence/section.

It does a good job with a Flesh Golem, the most Frankensteiny version I’ve seen in an adventure thus far, I believe.  And that’s GOOD! These things SHOULD be brought to life and not just monster stat blocks. It also, as a house, presents doors and windows to explore and balconies to break in from. Well, mentions them in the text anyway if not on the map. I suspect that, as a newer designer, there were map program issues and a learning curve there that has not yet been overcome. Still; some thought was given.

This thing is also NOT for level 1’s. It’s full of groups of 3HD and 4HD monsters, even mobs of 4d4 .5 HD monsters. I’m all for unbalanced encounters, but this one is a little rough for me. I like the concept of running away and coming back and exploring the factions, etc, but, still, those are some rough encounters. And a lot of them.

Really though, while the writing is above average I’m not willing to put it in the Best category. And It’s going to miss a Regert because of … map/key issues. There are multiple instances in the adventure where the text is referring to, I think, the wrong room. Hidden passages that end up … in which room? It’s never mentioned, and happens several times in the adventure. Stairs going … where? Who knows. Traps doors going to … who knows. And references to other rooms that just seem to be wrong. IE: refer to room #3. Or refer to room #11. Except it seems that those cross-references are wrong and they actually mean different rooms. This is super frustrating. Yes, you can fix it. No, I’m not going to put in the effort to fix it. I’m going to pick something else to play.

There are times in this in which the gothic horror is thick. Children in nightclothes at the edge of a clearing, staring at you. How can you get more gothic that that? Even the village and the boardwalk out of town, walled off, with a arcing bridge. Never really described but implied through text and maps and art. But, more practice is needed to bring this thing together, and at a minimum, not referring to one of the largest rooms on the map, the wine cellar, as “small.” 😉 Or surfaces mentioned as gleaming and then described as dusty. Logic issue. The whispers in the blood mire are not emphasized enough to fully realize the gothic, although it gets close.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview shows thirteen pages. You get to see the factions and the town, but not the actual encounters. That’s a miss, Bob. We needed to see a couple of the actual encounters in the house. Still, if you read the preview that IS offered, at least up to and including the town, you get a great idea of how the gothic atmosphere is both present/implied and also JUST missing the mark.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/337196/Whispers-in-the-Blood-Mire?1892600

By David Henley
David Henley Productions
Generic
Level ?

Here are some tags/keywords to get your imagination going. Fugitive Heretics, Cursed worshippers, Ancient shrine, Jungle, Dust, cobwebs, and artifacts Abnu’s Children is written for Agoth-Agog a new campaign setting in development by David Henley Productions. It is a short dungeon crawl in the classic style and playable with any game system. “Beware the children of Abnu, for they bear his curse…”

This seventeen page adventure describes an eight-ish room abandoned shrine with some cultists in it. It explores an interesting concept in presenting the rooms, but fails by being generic, abstracted, and not really having anything other than combat.

This thing had me worked up, in a good way, at first. It presented an old shine off the beaten track. Jungle to be hacked through to get there. Cursed people in the woods hanging around outside, looking for salvation at the shrine, harrying the party to protect what they see as the salvation to their curse. This is all done in very quick hit sentences. “Vine choked paths leading to and around the area”, for example. Then it follows that up with a format that has the room diagram at the top of the page, followed by some bullets, and then a heading for Objective or Threats. One room per page can be an interesting way to present encounters, with lots of room for clear formatting, etc.

Except the adventure falls down at nearly every opportunity. Starting with the map. It’s unnumbered. The designer tells us that: “Locations aren’t numbered so that there isn’t a feeling of the right path.” Uh huh. Except there is very clearly an entrance, and many, may adventures use a numbered key and don’t have a right path. What this does is cause the DM to have to annotate everything to get a numbered/keyed entry. THis is NOT ease of use. THis makes things substantially harder to run at the table as you dig through the adventure pages looking for the little picture that matches the room on the larger map. Just number the fucking thing. Sure, there ARE cases where room/key isn’t appropriate. This ain’t it.

The room text is … vague? Inaccurate? Lacking? Padding? “”This room is empty except for …” or “In fact this is a …” This sor of text does nothing but pad out the text. It needs to be tighter. Ray’s books addresses this in some detail. Then some of the room descriptions are inaccurate. The first room is listed as 10×15, when in fact it’s not, it’s larger, according to the map, if we use standard 5’ or 10’ squares. 

More importantly though, the rooms lack specificity. The descriptions are abstracted and use inconsistent words. There’s a wood carving in a room. The text then refers to a statue. This is not conducive to scanning the text and had me scratching my head for a bit. Did I miss something? No, they are one and the same. In another room it mentions that the rooms objective is to descend the crumbling stairs. Except there are no stairs? In the room or on the map? No. That wood carving, it’s just a wood carving. A statue. Of a young man, Anu. What position? Anything notable? Anything specific AT ALL? No. Just description after description of this abstracted text. Specificity is a good thing. It anchors the mind and in doing so it lets the mind run wild. But no.

This extends to what little (non-combat) interactivity there is in the adventure. To open a door make three arcane checks. Weeeee! It turns out the answer IS on the character sheet after all.

Threats are usually monsters, and not listed in the room description. SO a room full of heretics gets a boring old description and then, later on, maybe on the next page, it mentions Heretics under threats. (Yes, it’s not ACTUALLY one page per room. Which turns the format from promising to TERRIBLE.) People? In the temple? I guess there’s an order or battle or how they react to the party? No. Not present.

“What you came for is behind this door.” Sigh. No real treasure to speak of. Not real magic. No real loot. Are you sure this is an OSR adventure? Margins are wide, room names are generic. There was A LOT of room here to add flavour without expanding page count or expanding the text to an unusable extent. 

“Objective: Explore the room.” That’s original. I thought that was USUALLY the objective? A salve to format is never a good idea. 

It’s too bad. The initial overview had me worked up and excited. But the execution shows all of the classic signs of generic OSR content and writing that plagues the marketplace.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. You get to see the overview, that got me excited, on page five and then two rooms, showing the general layout/style of writing. So, at least in that regard, it’s a good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/337220/Abnus-Children?1892600

By Dan Smith, Steven Kenson, Dave Woodrum, Dante Parti-Smith, Adam Steele, Anthony Constantino
Smif Ink Games
OSR
Level 1?

A compendium of OTR compatable adventures that can be used as a connected campaign or dropped into your existing campaign as one off adventures.

This 41 digest page compilation contains twelve dungeons by a mix of designers. They are roughly interconnected through some pretexts but are different enough, in theme and style, that they can also easily be standalone entries. With a mixed group of designers and, it seems, no storing editor, it is no surprise that the quality ranges from “bad” to “Shows some promise …”

I suspect these compilation products sell well but get played minimally. They seem to offer value but my own experiences with them is that their quality is all over the place, based on the designer for the particular section you’re on. Even with a very strong guiding hand (Fullteron on Hyquatious Vaults comes to mind… ) it can be jarring to see writing styles and/or quality change. And the editing hand on this one is not very strong, exacerbating the problem.

First a few general comments. The stronger entries here are from Dan Smith and Dave Woodrum, both of whom I gather from the intro are more established designers. It shows. Their entries, while flawed, show some clear indication of understanding certain design principles. I’m going to cover some of their entries in this volume, and make some generalized comments about the rest. 

The font, layout and such reminds me of a GURPS supplement and, I think, Dan Smith may be the one responsible, as the project guide. His name sounds familiar and it may be that he did a portrait of me for one of the GURPS books back in the 90’s. The fontis a chunky one with, essentially, BOLD always on. This is not the best for legibility purposes. I find it tiring on the eyes and not a quick read. It’s not exactly unreadable, but its getting awfully close to the line of “too much effort to bother.” There seems to be this desire to apply a house style to products when, in fact, just picking a very legible font is almost always the right way to go; house style can be implemented in other ways. 

The levels are VERY loosely interconnected. Essentially you get a in and an out for each other and maybe a note that this level level can be connected to the one above it. Thematically they tend to be worlds apart. We get a tavern and some jail cells, a cult HQ, a pill bug/harpy cave level, a mushroom forest, a strange cult city/lair, and so on. Even then, the first six or so dungeons are more closely connected than the last few, which explicitly say things like “a set of caves off of a trade route” or some such. The product has no table of contents or summary to orient a DM to the dungeons within; you just get to wade in and see if the theming matches what you want. They tend to all have a full page map and then between one to three pages to describe fifteen-ish rooms in the dungeon, plus or minus a few rooms, depending on the level. For a product claiming to be OSR, treasure, meaning Gold=XP, is EXTREMELY light. Enough so that they might as well have put none in. Each dungeon gets a little summary paragraph, describing whats going on, right after its map, and maybe some environment notes about light, smells, etc. These are great, and do exactly what they should: provide some overall atmosphere and give the DM a summary as to what is going on. I still think atmosphere should be on an “always on” page, like the map, but, whatever. They tried.

Dans first entry, The High Priestess Tavern, is one of the stronger examples. It doesn’t really start strong though, with a minimal pretext. Basically someones son has gone missing and you’re sent to the tavern to find them. In there you get in a bar fight and are captured, or find your way, to the basement jail cells. That’s about as much pretext as you get, a sentence or two, and then it’s GO TIME! Things improve in usability and style after this. We get a note that the tavern environment is “heavy mead/body odor, dusty floor, 60% light” which is enough to start placing an image in the DMs mind that can be expanded upon Other rooms gives us notes, at the very beginning of “(lit)”, letting us know an important environment condition. There are a good detail or two being present, like certain people in the bar having a right hand that is stained red. Descriptions are short, with the fifteen or so rooms all being described on two pages. Loud and boisterous guards, a drunk dwarf, a barkeep who wont leave the bar. A few personalities for the prisoners would have been nice, and kicking up the descriptive text another notch to be more evocative would also be in order (with adding substantially more words, of course.)

Woodrums first entry, as an example of his work, differs quite a bit. We get about another sentence of description per room and the evocative nature of the text is quite a bit weaker. But the interactivity does get quite a bit more. There are frescoes to look at and get clues from, magic pools, and the monsters tend to be engaged in something, like alchemical researchers shoving a boulder aside. The “scene” setups are quite good, even if the descriptions could use some work.

The other designers are far weaker. The dungeons tend to be just hacks, with things to kill (and the trap quivelant) and little else except, maybe, an environment thing like a river or something. “As you enter this room, it appears to be nothing more than an empty dirt filled room.” The “as you enter” implies a kind of hybrid read-aloud format, but the “As you enter” shows the weakness in writing, as does the “appears” stuff. Another designer has room after room of descriptions like “This area contains fungus nutritious to the monsters.” … a dazzling example of how abstracted descriptions ruin a dungeon. Still another likes to tell us what a room USED to be used for, or using meandering writing styles to get to the point. 

Of special note here is Adam Steele. This appears to be his first and only entry in to designing something. He’s written a trog-cavern level which could appear as a short dungeon In Fight On! And not be too out of place. “A cascade of ledgers, papers and scrolls is strewn about, along with body parts and blood.” Nice! And he’s got the style of the little scene/vignette thing that WOodburn does in place also, with a trog impaled on a spear in the wall, or another having a tasty snack with some slaves. Still a little loose on the writing, especially the longer and more complex rooms (which I suspect suffer also from the Dan Smith bold/font style which obfuscates monsters stats and makes everything run together instead of the stats being a kind of aside.)

These are all, essentially two to three page dungeons, with one page being the map. They suffer from that. One pagers don’t have enough room to breathe. It would have been better to include fewer dungeons but give the ones that are included more room. I’m no stranger to stunt writing a dungeon, and little good comes from the final product, except, perhaps, in the mind of the designer, as a tool to learn focus. 

I’m not a big fan of compilations. As I said, the quality tends to be all over the place. And, I never feel like I do the review justice. Should I write fifteen separate reviews for what are, essentially, fifteen one page dungeons? (Ok, one page of description and one page of map.) QUality tends to be all over the place, as it is in this one. This needed some more conceptual work, a better layout, an summary/table of contents, and stronger editor control over the content. “No! Do it again!”

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages and shows you the first dungeon, the Tavern and jail cells underneath. It is one of the better ones in the compilation … so judge the book accordingly.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/332605/First-Level-Dungeons?1892600