By Masters of Evil
Self Published
OSE
"Low Levels"
A Sphinx sits proudly in the sands of the desert, constructed in honour of the forgotten potentates who once ruled the lands in time immemorial. From the abandoned camp and scaffold, it would seem either graverobbers or archaeologists were recently here, but where have they gone and what lies within the bowels of the Sphinx?
This seventeen page adventure presents a small egyptian themed tomb with thirteen rooms in nine pages. Dry, with some sloppy wording and poor interactivity, but also committing no cardinal sins.
There’s just not much here to go on. I usually try and mention a few nice things about an adventure, something I thought it did well or a concept that it had that was interesting, even if it didn’t actually pan out … and I’m having trouble doing that with this one. It’s just kind of … there. As if both the highs and lows were smoothed out. There is this concept of a Ushabti. That’s a statue like thing that moves from room to room. If you’re in the room with it then you get a glimpse in to the room in the underworld. That’s something that has been done before in myriad ways … from the underworld and fy realm and so on. There’s not really much to it though. You get maybe a secret passage revealed. Otherwise it’s just more window dressing for the room you’re in. Window dressing that you can’t control, since its governed by the status thing and its random movements. Not really puzzle tool or anything like that. And the statue dude thing is immune to all damage but fucks you up if you mess with it. So … yeah. There’s just not much going on with this feature.
And the rest of it is … meh?
“The air is heavy, pregnant with a thousand years of decay …” Ok, so, heavy is good. I might even be able to stomach pregnant, as a sense of anticipation. But the thousand years of decay bit? We’re bumping up against getting purple. In other places we get text that tells us that skeletons are “undying guardians animated by the power of the alter!” Ok, so, yes, that’s what a skeleton is, an undying guardian. And there’s no need to tell us that they are powered by the power of the alter, especially since there’s no indication that we can destroy or alter it in order to put them to rest. It’s just an explanation for why the skeletons are coming to life. There’s no actual gameable content in the phrasing. In another place we’re told that there is a golden sarcophagus, plated with gold plate … and no worth placed upon it. You can’t tell me the entire room is made of platinum and then not tell me how much the party gets when they scrape the metal off to sell it. And, traditionally, we also roll for wanderers when counting grains of sand on the beach.
Things that look like rea-daloud end with “the door in the west wall is stuck” so, clearly, not read-aloud. And yet that standsin opposition to the rest of the text in that (the first para in each room) section that is worded like it’s an initial room description for the players. It’s just … nothing in this is well thought out and to the effect of it on the game.
I can’t point to any one thing that makes it stand out as bad. I can say, though, that it comes off as rather boring. Using words like “large” to describe things. The lack of evocative descriptions, in spite of some lapses in to purple prose. Not really much of interest to investigate. It’s all much like the real pyramids in Giza. Once you go inside it’s super anti-climactic. “Oh, a large room of rock.” Kind of like going in to an empty room made of cinderblock. Ok. I guess I’m here now. It’s not that they are devoid of anything, but they certainly FEEL like they are devoid of anything. Like the descriptions are all just a little plain.
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1. The preview is also nineteen pages, so you get to see everything.
By WR Beatty
Rosethrone Publishing
S&W
Levels 1-...7?
A short adventure location – a shrine and a tomb for a nearly forgotten godling. Rumors suggest this is the resting place of He Who Forged Heaven and Hell. Craftsmen and Smiths pay their respects at the Rusted Tomb, but few others care, though some say there’s ancient magic behind those rust-streaked walls.
This twelve page adventure presents a small temple with seventeen rooms … that houses a dead god. It’s less adventure and more place where you could have an adventure, being somewhat … statically described? And then presenting some adventure ideas in the rear. Meh.
Beatty does a great job with one of the rumors/hooks in this adventure. Here’s the entry: “There’s this old guy who comes to town once in a while, Demos or something like that. He leads those blacksmith worshippers up on the North Road on the way to Tiresh Village. They call that the Rusted Tomb. Anyway, he’s an odd lot. Always loads up on vegetables and smoked meats and tobacco and the like… Nothing odd there, but he always asks about old nails.” It’s in voice, which bring out a little bit of character, giving the DM an idea of how to introduce and run it. And, as we all know, I’m all for helping the DM out without spoon feeding them. The goal is to provide information that enables the DM to greatness. And that rumour/hook does it. Also, it’s very human. We’re talking about the tomb of a god here, or, at least, an angel. But the temple is in decline and this is most like the last generation of priests … once these four go then there will be no one left. The world has moved on. And all of that comes out in that text. Those blacksmith worshippers. Buy vegetables and smoked meats. It’s very mundane and very real with how things became mundane over time. People acting like people, or, at least, hyper realistic versions of people, brings so much more to D&D.
There are a couple of other interesting things here. SOme gold trimmed white cloths as magic items. Worn over the head as a kind of crude veil, they filter out poisons giving a bonus to saves. Kind of hard to use in a combat, also, right? Very nice. And, at one point the party finds a twenty ton anvil bolted to the ground. “How to unbolt and move the 20 ton anvil is left up to the parties ingenuity.” Absolutely!
But the rest of this …? No.
The thing is kind of generically described. And I don’t mean that in the usual way. Rather it’s more of a MERP adventure way. It’s as if we took everyones presence, their life and sense of it, out of the adventure. There are rooms with objects in them, but not people. There is no sense of worshippers being here. Or even priests except for maybe two rooms … and even those seem devoid of the life of living. As if they were laid down for people to use but never had. It’s sterile. Devoid of life. Literally, since there are no encounters on the main tomb level.
And this is on purpose. It’s related to that level range of one through seven. The back page has four separate adventure ideas. One for 1-3, one for 4-7, one for 8-10, and one for high levels. There are a couple of guidelines, and outline really, in a quarter page, for each of them, in what the adventure may look like. One mentions that they high priest might hire some guards. But, bringing the thing to life, personalizing it, putting people and worshippers and all of that in to it, is all up to the DM.
A linear map. Items worth stealing that don’t have values. This is made for the DM to set an adventure in. As if someone published a village of sixteen pages and then said that you could have some adventures here. As such its more window dressing FOR an adventure. It is a place for situations to occur, rather than the actual situations that occur. And, thus, isn’t really an adventure. More of a regional setting where the region is “seventeen rooms.”
And, I don’t review regional settings.
This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages
By Maksim Kotelnikov
Monthly Adventures
Generic/Universal
A small group of adventurers through the fault of chance are caught up in the investigation of a mysterious conspiracy: someone is turning the entire city into a strange magical rune.
This 29 page adventure details a “plot” from … eons ago? To destroy … humans? Weird shit happens in a city, you’re led around by the nose, things happen to you rather than you doing things, and it’s all presented in a very story-game driven way while giving the trappings of the party having agency. Not something to do, in spite of a decent premise.
What attracted me to this adventure was this statement by the designer: “There is no main villain or his minions, nor are there any necromancers, cultists, or thugs. There is no opposing evil here to antagonize the heroes. This is an adventure in which they face their own incredulity and paranoia as they unravel the mystery of a weapon designed for a long-forgotten war.” Which is pretty intriguing, except for the long-forgotten war part.
Long ago the elves lived and loved and were happy. And then the humans showed up and cut down trees, etc. You know the drill by now. Anyway, the elves have this mage dude who does this spell that Makes The Land Itself protect itself. It goes off, but takes a few millennia to get to power and work. Meanwhile, someone builds a city on the ancient burial ground, err, I mean elf lands. Twenty years ago weird shit starts happening in the city. Mayor Dickcheese and Wizard McWizardson figure it out and start building and demolishing streets and buildings to turn the layout of the city in t a giant anti-magic rune, to protect everyone. And they don’t tell anyone about it. This is the extent of the the whole “no evil cultists” thing. The party shows up, see some weird shit, investigates, and then goes and gets a magic item to complete a ritual to save the city.
I don’t know. Good premise, with a couple of good elements going on in the adventure. At one point you look in to two weird deaths. One of them has a dude who has choked on a moth. The other has a woman who has hung herself from a tree branch .. that she could not reach. Kinda nifty. A little frustrating since there is no way for the party to arrive at an answer, until the very end of the adventure, so it’s just window dressing to fill up time. But, still, nice ideas.
The entire adventure is, though, a hunk of junk. On page one we’re told that this is a “Script for a tabletop RPG” Ought oh! Script. Tabletop RPG. And, sire enough, the adventure is arranged in Acts, under the heading of The Story. Sure, you can do this and have it not be a shit show. But that rarely happens.
The first half or so of the pages are devoted to locations in the city, a kind of overview. The mayor, the museum (which is more of a Believe it or Not attraction, so I’ll not bitch much about it existing), a tavern, and so on. And then the mayor, the only mage in town, Timmy te Weasel (a mary sue) and the leader of the smugglers, wh o is a lycanthrope. But while the designer acknowledges that all lycanthropes are evil … not these lycanthropes. Okey doke. The locations, such as the hucker and the bar, are not too bad. They are overly described, but at least they are not the standard fantasy fair. Also, they don’t really matter AT ALL to the adventure. As a general town feature, sure. And the NPC”s are also overly described. Paragraphs of information that don’t really mean anything or have an impact on the game.
On to the adventure proper!
It doesn’t really exist. It’s just an outline. Act One is a page and half of Let The Party Get To Know The City, finishing with them fucking some elf bard chick in the tavern. Act two are just a couple of vignettes … rats come out of the bakers shop, from a hole in the ground, that guards wont let you investigate. And, of course, the two dead bodies I mentioned before. These are both handled in a paragraph, with nothing more to them. The first is, in its entirety “The first of them was named Radomir, and he was a rather plump burly man who had recently worked as a glassblower in the weavers’ quarter. All the evidence suggests that Radomir simply suffocated while he was taking a leak. A careful examination of the body reveals no marks on the neck or any signs of poisoning. However, a common night moth was strangely lodged in the poor man’s windpipe.” Fill in the rest. And, I note, this is one of the more detailed things to happen.
And this happens over and over again. A sentence about what could happen and then another explaining what really is going on and how the party can’t really do anything. No real encounters. No real challenges. Eventually you make it to the sewers, near the end of the seven acts, and get attacked by the weres, who were driven insane by the spell. Thats all you’re getting for detail though. Make up everything else yourself.
It’s all very abstracted. An outline in First This Happens And Then This Happens paragraph form. There’s no real agency here. You’re told to interfere with the party doing things, by using the guards, etc. This is a story game, but, it doesn’t lean in to that. It’s trying to be a traditional game, but it doesnt lean in to that either. He licked the one. He chased the other. And then he ended up dead. It’s what you got.
This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages and shows you a bit of the town locations, which are moderately interesting, but not so much so to take up the space they do and, ultimately, are just window dressing.
By Marcel Wirtz
Ondaris Publishing
OSR
Level 0 Funnel
Unveil the mysteries of Oak Grove in “The Legacy,” a thrilling adventure module where the discovery of an inheritance causes a stir in the village of Oak Grove: Is there really a treasure to be found in an old tomb in the cursed heath? Will any brave villagers dare to search for it? And what else lurks in the vaults beneath the cursed heath? Are you brave enough to uncover the secrets?
This fifteen page adventure uses … five pages? To describe about eighteen rooms in a trap-filled tomb. The set up has a sweet Gamma World vibe, but the dungeon, proper, is nothing more than three sub-standard one-page dungeons with about five rooms per level.
This one is wildly frustrating. I can see, I think, what it’s trying to do. And what it’s trying to do is groovy. But it fails at actually accomplishing it. Or, rather, it does accomplish it, but in the totally wrong way to create an interesting adventuring environment.
This is a funnel. There are no funnel rules, or guidelines, or anything else in this, but, I’m sure you can probably find some funnel guidelines for whatever system you are using. More interesting than that, though, is the intro. This thing has some PROMISE. You’re in this small village. Living in huts. The world outside of the village is VERY dangerous. The War of the Gods and The Great SCaring was 500 years ago. The splendors of the world were destroyed and now everyone is isolated and trying to eek out a living. It’s got a very traditional Gamma World vibe where the first adventure is your tech 1 village living in fear of everything. Almost Kingdom Death. I’m down for that, given my love for Gamma World, and a great starting vibe for the OSR is “i dont wanna be a mud farmer like me pa.” It’s doing a pretty decent job is setting things up. And then it ramps the fucking shit up. Someones mom is dead. [I’m generally against this sort of thing, but, in a funnel, at level 0, in the first adventure, I think it’s ok … as long as we don’t lean on the relative thing too much. There’s a reason players play murder hobos … to keep the DM from fucking with their families.] Dad is long gone. The village sent him to the Town a couple of years ago with all of the crops, etc, to buy supplies for the winter. He came home, having been robbed on the road of all of his belongings. The funnels family has been living under a kind of cloud since then. Several people died that winter. Dad was not the same after that; trying to get people together to go in to The Heath … the ravaged lands, to look for glorious treasures. Then he withered and died. Crops have failed over this summer and its looking kind of bleak this year also. A really good job is done here with the initial set up. Then, while cleaning out moms shit you find a letter from dad. Seems that, in town, he was seduced by the takes of glory, in the tavern he ended up in, of the guild of Adventurers. He sold all of his worldly good … the villagers bounty, to join. He got a clue: a great metal demon head in a hill in The Health, with some cryptic inscription beneath it (a handout.) But then he died, never getting anyone to go with him. Great twist man!
The adventure shall never reach such heights again. The last room of the tomb has the party (maybe) opening a sarcophagus. Dude inside wakes up and rips the heart out of the PC who opened it. Oh shit! A lich! (It is, after all, a funnel.) Then he’s like, oh, sorry, my bad, you’re not the people who entombed me. Hey, wanna be my minions in return for lands and wealth? Pretty good!
But the rest of it … not so much. The first real encounter is the bronze demon face in a hillside. It take a column, seven paragraphs, to describe it and the trap. It’s padded out. It over explains. It states the obvious. AT one point you find a document in code. The text tell us “If the players deciphered the writing it would be advantageous to them.” Well, yeah. And if they didn’t TPK in every encounter then would that be an advantage to them also? It does this over and over again.
It goes this. It goes on and on and on and on on a topic. But, that’s not the adventure. That’s the front fucking door, in this case. The adventure is a series of three one page dungeons. A flat dungeon level, in isometric view, with about five rooms per level. And a little text bubble with a couple of sentences pointing at the room where the text occurs. CLassic one page dungeon vibe. So you get some text like “A key is hanging on a hook on the wall opposite the door – there is a chest underneath. The chest is a mimic that attacks approaching players, the key would open the chest in level 2.” That’s it; that’s your room. And, that’s not even typical. Almost every single room/encounter is not what we might of as one, but, rather, a hallway trap. (or, room trap out of grimtooth.) EVERYTHING. There are literally two creatures encounters: a black pudding and the lich dude at the end, which, is not actually a combat since he’s a lich.Sure, there’s a wandering monster table, but no actual room encounters with creatures or tricks or things to investigate … except for traps. You know how old school dungeons used to just draw pit symbols on the map, without keying them? This is the equivalent of that … except they are keyed. And that’s all the dungeon essentially is.
Great set up. Seriously, people fuck the setups all the time but this one was great. And decent ending with the lich. But everything in between is shit.
This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages, so you get to see that rad set up. But nothing more, so, a bad preview overall since you’d get the wrong impression from it.
The Temple of Polyphema: The temple of the cyclopean goddess has been taken over by a band of marauding gnolls. Are you a bad enough dude to drive them out, and avert the terrible curse that would befall Polyphema’s gutless followers? Levels 2-4, 25 keyed areas.
Time to suck off The Gaborian again. Seriously, how do you people run a game when 90% of the people at the table are named Gabor? Nice cover on this one, with the … dancing bear?
Echoes from Fomalhaut #10 continues the tradition of fine products from First Hungarian. Seriously, other than, maybe, Fight On or Arduin, the Echoes line is producing one of the best sets of adventures and supplements in the hobby. There are others, such as Dungeon Age, who are consistently producing fine work, but the addition of a kind of consistent tone and theme really sells this in a way that few other supplements have. Do you think he’ll let me buy a complete hardcopy set if I rim him a bit also? Maybe, for like, $1000? I’ll pay for shipping. One Yul Brenner, please!
In this 56 page issue you’re getting the Temple of Jeng, a killer adventure. The Gorge of the Unmortal Hermit, a weirdo place, Oom the Many, a god/cult description, Guests of the Beggar King, a mostly civilized “kingdom” you can visit with a lot of weird shit going on and, mayhap, be a standin for mighty Kyshal as a home base,, and the Temple of Polyphema, which I’m going to talk the most about.
More than most, though, I want to talk about specificity. It’s something I cite a lot, in a positive manner, in its efforts to really bring a work to life. It adds character, as opposed to detail which just adds to the word count. Specificity gives the DM something to hang their hat on. Something to leverage in to more. It inspires, rather than the ability of detail to simply make the text longer and harder to comprehend. This specificity, along with well chosen adjectives, can help bring something to life much more so than without it.
We’ve got this temple on a mountain and a village below it. They are cursed; if they don’t worship there every day then they slowly turn in to goats. Oops, don’t piss off the goddess of polymorphism, I guess. Anyway, some gnolls have moved in and a couple of the villagers are now sporting goat heads.
The temple has a copse of woods outside. What does that make you think of, to imagine? Ok, now, what if I told you that it’s actually a grove of olive trees. Now what? It’s a grove, not a copse, and they are olive trees. This conjures up the greek, yes? You’re now in a different headspace, you have a different framing for all that comes after. The context is different and we’re now working with different cultural baggage to leverage. This is the difference between the generic and the specific.
We see this in other areas as well. One room, the main rooms for the gnolls, has fifteen of them in it “four of them with human heads”, the text tells us. Uh, right on! It IS the temple of polyphema, after all. And, in the same room “The walls are lined with grimacing theatrical masks, their mouths stuffed with rags – the gnolls were afraid of the ominous moaning wind blowing through them.” Not useless backstory, for it tells us what happens when the rags are removed from the mouths. It has integrated the backstory in to the description in such a way that the word count is no more.
In another room we have some old, decaying furniture swarming with large creamy centipedes. Harmless, but can deliver a vicious bite, the text tells us. Do you frequently see this in an adventure? A normal creature? Almost as window dressing, but not quite. Those six legged possums in The Upper Caves that I am so fond of. The mundane, or nearly so, presented to the party.
Let us look at a magic item: “Golden apple: This gold apple is worth 4000 gp as a piece of jewelry. Carrying it brings a constant bless spell. Those who learn of its existence must save or desire to possess it by money, guile or bloodshed.” It’s just a fucking bless. But, also, it’s a golden apple … with all the historical context that implies. And, note that curse like thing. Kick ass man! I wish almost everything came with some of that artifact shit attached to it. A decanter full of moon-silver liquid? Sign me up!
Elsewhere in the issue we find a sickle that feel unnaturally heavy … a non-druid picking it up must save or start cutting ritual wounds in to themselves. Isn’t that fun? SO much more fun han “cursed, -1 to hit” or some other shit. How about a cel littered with gnawed bones. Psych! Restless skeletons bitches! I love it when the players slap their heads and say “Of course! They were bones! Of course!”
I could go on and on about The Court of Beggar King also. A fucking kick ass place to sally forth from. And, get caught up in the intrigues of. For every opulent welcoming feast there is also three hanged heroes suspended from nooses in the treasury room.
This is $6.50 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages and you can see the first few pages of that Poluphema temple. Rend thy clothes and weep at thy own feeble efforts at adventure writing.
By Ben Gibson
Coldlight Press
OSE/5e/Pathfinder (Conversion Notes for stats, etc)
Levels 1-2
More than a mile away from the sweaty market town that bears his name, Merchant Lord Salmo spends most of his time in his formidable manse, luxuriating in wealth and style…wealth that nobody, not his slaves, nor his workmen, nor his rivals, would mind him losing…
This 22 page adventure uses four pages to describe a local lords manor house, framed as a raid to steal him blind. It covers the necessities nicely, with plenty of situations and possabilities. A little staid, perhaps, but it does a good job of being what it is.
You’re ripping this dude off and/or doing some murdering, as needs be. In town we’ve got a short little table of rumors/hooks to get you going. A failed handless thief will tell you shit for an ale … that’s gotta be a great sight. Or the failed drunken steward offers a map, for vengeance. Or the dog handler talks treats or there’s a dude hiring new guards. Implied, in each of these little one sentence things, is more than enough information to get a DM going and inject flavour in to things. A failed handless thief? You betcha! A doggo lover? A KILLER doggo lover? Noice! One short little table, that could have been a throw-away in any other adventure, injects a major amount of flavour in to this one. And that’s the goal. The specificity. We don’t need details, we need specificity.
The Logos map is fine. A basement two floors above and a little turret and widows walk thing. Clear enough, although, again, I might have made note of where there are generally servants located, for sound and light purposes. We do get a little table to handle patrolling guards and some general guidelines on how they handle sounds and react.
This IS the heart of the adventure, those reaction notes. There is a small one page key for the twenty rooms, but that is noting mostly the existence, or not, of servants and anything worth looting. But the reactions are where this thing is at. The cook, who is kindly and sweet and “worn down by a lack of appreciation for her modest gifts as a cook” will try to talk you in to fleeing. The steward is proline to fumbling and ignores all strange noises, since he’s new to the mansion. The accountant barely registers threats. The dogs are lonely and respond well to kindness … and prone to bark at squirrels. There are notes on holidays and dinner parties, on food & wine delivery wagons and how the guards react when their lord is there (more cautious about blowing their horns) You can see how each and every one of these notes, and more, are ALL oriented towards actual play at the table. Everything here is laser focused on the party sneaking or bluffing their way in, and what then happens. And none of it is overblown. Jesus, the thing uses four pages, how can it go on at length? No, just enough. Just enough specificity to bring it to life for the DM to launch it as their own. And then it moves on. Just enough guidelines to run a holiday or dinner party, two or three sentences to do a vibe, and then it moves on. Focused man, just absolutely focused on the game at the table.
Let’s look at some descriptions!! “Dingy and dusty, with improvised table and chairs used by shirking guards” Great. The magicians bedroom smells of sulfur and ammonia. The upper gallery is well lit and cool with a gilded statue in a nook.
Notably, there’s not an over formatted description here. The description and the game elements are just integrated together in to the description. This is, I think, my favorite description style. It’s hard to do, requiring focus and great writing skills, but produces a text that that feels natural and everything just fits together nice and smoothly.
It’s the little details here, the specificity, that bring so much more to this. Just little off hand phrases. Like the no hands thing. Or the fact that the wine in the wine cellar is worth less “watered down due to servant and guard pilferage.” The shirking guards, the attention to the garden and the tree that can be climbed to leap to a tower roof. Extending this snarkiness to the pregens, we get a collector, reluctant muscle, and a couple of freelance murderers. Alright man! I dig it!
And, like all good adventures, you can piecemeal some treasure together, but the real hoard is going to take some good work to get. I could do better with the magic item descriptions, but, otherwise, a pretty good job in crafting an adventure for an evenings play! Maybe just a little less than what I prefer, but I’ll err on the side of checking this out.
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. The preview is just a couple of pages but is essentially all of the actual parts of the adventure, so you can see what you are getting and how it focuses on on the reactions, etc.
The Nameless Designer
Self Published
Heroes of Adventure
Someone suggested this. Hrumph!
The sighting and return of the great mystical comet Mithilanthor heralds a time of wild magic, which has only added to the sense of unease. At night, under the cover of darkness, shadowy humanoid creatures have been seen riding their nightmare steeds with vengeful fury on the horizon. As a heroic adventurer seeking to make your mark in the region, you will undoubtedly face a range of challenges and dangers in this volatile and unpredictable landscape.
This 64 page sandbox region describes a little keep on the borderlands between the civilized world and the Beast Man lands. It’s got its shit together, in layout and looking pretty, but is so aggressively generic and abstracted it makes me wonder what anyone was thinking in creating it. “Maybe put a keep on the borderlands and run an adventure!”
Ah, and adventure! You start at the Central Station and follow the river … err, no. But, the Keep and the mythos of Central Station continue to pull at us all, eh? The very borders of the civilized world, with a Keep there as a base, and the Marlows setting off for their fortunes and adventure!
We’ve go a borderlands region, with woods, hills and so on. There’s this river with an old stone bridge over it, marking the owned lands to the west and the wildlands to the east. Up on a hilltop we’ve got a keep with its retired adventurer ruler. To the west of the bridge we’ve got a dozen or so sites to look in to and to the east, across the river … three. So, much of what you’ll be exploring and fucking with is IN the civilized lands. This strikes me as fucking weird. The lands over the river have some elves (“the wild folk”) and one small ruin and the Beastmen. And that’s it. So, we’re not really fucking around with those great black parts of the map that note Here There Be Dragons and doing some points of light. We’re instead talking to a villager who is paying moderate taxes to the local lord who is also an ok dude.
There are some VERY basic rules for clearing hexes and generating some action for each of those hexes. Let’s see, I rolled bears, and overabundance of, and ruins. GO do something with that. Sure. The table is just a bit small though, for, what, two thirds of a double page map? And the same could be said for the wanderer table, which is WOEFULLY small AND overspecific. for a region of this size.
I’m getting ahead of myself. I layout here is professional. Nice two page spreads, decently evocative art, and a nice use of bullets and whitespace and bolding, even if long sections of italics appear to the detriment of quick scanning. Also nice is a little overview of a few major plotlines, like the beastman invasion or an incursion from the Shadowrealm. Little timeline like things, as well as a mundane-ish leaning event generator for the Keep. Trade Goods arriving! Oh, they are full of disease. Let me rif on that …
Ok, now back to the Suckatude.
This entire product is shallow. It’s abstracted and generic. To a degree, even, that I’m not sure WOTC has even achieved. And, I’m afraid, I’m going to struggle to communicate just how pervasive this is in this supplement. Pervasive is even the wrong word … it’s core to this adventure. But not in a “maybe do something like this “ way that plagues to many others. Instead it comes off as … aloof? But without the judgment that aloof implies. Distant, maybe?
And I don’t know how to communicate this. The well at the keep is “A large well and common gathering area. One of the few areas where plants and trees grow within the keep.
” So, sure, it’s a well in a keep. Why should it get a long description? But then a dungeon chasm is “The flicker of your torch reveals an ominous abyss, the ground falling away beneath your feet as if swallowed by an endless darkness” So, ignoring that “your torch/your feet” shit … It’s almost like the chasm is an after thought? Or, the description of a room with a tomb (titled as “Tomb”) comes off as: “The cavern chamber contains is dimly lit, dusty crypt, where the scent of decay and the feeling of ancient curses pervades the air.” It’s kind of like it’s being narrated, but in a kind of post-modern meta fashion? This is common in every single room and description. You get about one sentence of … read-aloud? And then a bullet or two. But nothing is really DESCRIBED. Nothing is specific. Typical treasure might be “Treasure; d20 random old empire style curiosities (value 5d20sp each item)” … abstracted and generic. Or, an example of a bullet, for the DM, meant to provide extra detail “Trophies, items from Lord Cullyn’s previous adventuring career can be found adorning the walls and drawers.” Uh. Sure. Yes, that is an idea for a room. Maybe you’d like to actually describe the room and/or trophies?
And, I guess, that’s the major thrust of every description here, both read-aloud or for the DM. it’s an IDEA for something. A deep and shadowy chasm is in this chamber, or, This is the lords trophy room from his adventuring days. It’s all a conclusion rather than the description that would lead someone to make that conclusion. The rooms. The situations. The read-aloud. The treasure. The wanderers, even.Everything
And that sucks shit. Specificity is the soul of the narrative, says The Judge. And then …
Oh! I know! I know what this is! I wwas thinking about this abandoned and cursed village in the adventure. The descriptions for all of the buildings are like one sentence each and the village description starts with something like that they are all cursed and trapped in the shadow realm and you can there to save them. And then the boring ass abstracted village descriptions start. That got me think about this. And I recalled something else that does EXACTLY this. The old MERP supplements. They would give these generic little descriptions to the inside of the locations and then gie you like a one para or one column description. “Mim the petty dwarf could come back and dominate the region and he could live in this tower.” Descriptions were then like “This is the bathroom, it has a hole in the ground’” and so on.
And I guess thats great, but that makes it a regional setting and not really an adventure or a sandboxy adventure. To do that you’ve got to make something specific. And while there ARE creatures in some of the rooms, the rest of he adventure and its descriptions, everything else, is more of this distant view of things.
Oh, and the orcs … err, Beastmen, don’t really show up in the adventure. One of the big plot things involve them, but you’ll be doing all of that yourself. And, thus also, there is no Caves of Chaos. Or, I would suggest, anything else of real interest. Enjoyyour abandoned villages and their ilk.
There are no wizard guilds, no orcs or dwarves. Monsters exist, but only as legends haunting distant reaches. The ascendant Church hunts down any hint of magic, and witches and enchanters practice their forbidden arts only in secret. Lords command, knights ride to battle, and peasants die in the mud.
This 320 (!) page supplement is not, as it suggests, a hex crawl but rather a regional setting complete with sandboxy elements and hidden locales and “dungeons” to explore. It’s fucking DENSE man, and needs some reference docs. It’s also a fucking WILD ride, with the most Darklands vibe I think I’ve ever seen.
Mudcore motherfuckers! Errr, no, not mudcore. And not quite Darklands. But, closer to both of those than The Forgotten Realms. The setting here is, as the designer tells us, vaguely Scottish in the … 1200’s? Let’s not take what I just said there too seriously … We need to emphasize the vaguely part of that sentence. Anyway, it’s a regional setting with a healthy sandbox component and dungeons. It’s unlikely you would need anything other than this to run a decent length campaign.
We’ve got this island, with a wall running over the a chunk of it in the north. To the south are the south are the southerners ruled by Edward and to the north … well, he rules there also. But the northern tribes/lords don’t like it and are vaguely in rebellion. At least a smooch as they think they can get away with. There’s the catholic church running around here also. And, the Romans ruled everything a thousand years ago. So far we’ve got a pretty mundane setting. Except, demons are real. So is magic … but don’t get burned as a heretic. There are a few mythic creatures, although no real Humanoids, as we know them in D&D, except for some giants. And some Old Ones, the Rishae, which resemble, in temperament and technology, the Engineers from Alien. Oh, and there’s a fucking dragon. Just don’t roll a fucking 00 on the wilderness wandering table while off the roads. (+20 to your die roll off the roads … meaning you rolled a 120. And that’s not great … well, I mean, it is for the dragon …)
The region map is about thirty hexes across and about … forty tall? With each hex being 2 miles. Yes indeed. Mountains on the east with a pass leading to the civilized lands, a wall on the south cutting off the north from the same. An ocean on the west (with a couple of islands … not Ireland) and frozen/glacial mountains in the north. So, not exactly Scotland. But, whatever. It’s a nifty little region map. Roman roads, trails, a couple of coutposts and places of note (twenty, in fact! 🙂 and eight hidden locations. Its supported by some hex generation tables to help the DM out in populating hexes when the party searches, with some name generators and such. In addition, the wandering table is relatively extensive, with each entry taking from half a page to a page. The entry for “guarded prisoner”, a half column ot so, gives us some options on where the prisoner is being transported to, the numbers of prisoners and guards, what the prisoner is accused of, and a cute little “Desperate offers of prisoners” table, with “riches beyond anyone’s wildest imagination” and “dark powers” being a couple of the options. And thus we can also see the tone of the setting. It’s not quite grimdark, but it leans towards a human-centric historically accurate setting, with a little snark and fun thrown in. I think it’s a great fucking tone.
There are six or so primary factions, with each taking a couple of pages to describe. Who they are, what they want, what they think of the others, and some dark secrets they have. This is the primary driver of the region. Those groups are working with and/or against each other and almost every locale is related to that subtle, or not so, power struggle. And by now everyone should know how I like Katey Perry,. Baby, the party’s a firework … and they are adventurning a gas factory.
The hooks here are interesting as well. Hook may be the wrong word … it’s more how to get the campaign started. Each lasts a half page or so, maybe a third of a page. There’s a prison riot, with good advice to get the party started and how to get them off of the prison island … without it being a railroad and WITH giving them some entanglements in others affairs to drive further adventure. Another has them being tasked with doing Night Work by .gov … a perfect reason why the local knights aren’t doing the work given the hotbed political situation. And so it goes, with a good variety and some really good advice, for each of them, in how to get the party started and entangled in things. I appreciated that a lot.
Several of the sites have “dungeons”, which just means floorplans, to one degree or another. A couple, such as a spider lair or the alien masterminds, are more of a “real” dungeon, with others being closer to “well, fuck it, lets loot the abbey!” but all have a reasonable potential for the party to be murder hobo’ing in them. These are not full of exploratory dungeons, but neither are they site based. The maps tend to be more simplistic than a full of exploratory dungeon and more focused on the functionality of the site.
These dungeons are pretty good. The Shrine of Shulls reads “Skulls piled upon skulls. Giant skulls, human skulls, rishae skulls, skulls of strange beasts. The cup on the altar is made from a skull and the curate wears a skull as a hat.” Place a skull upon the skull throne and receive the Blessing of the Dead. (The chalice fills with black blood. If smeared upon the forehead, it allows those thus daubed to see and speak with the spirits of the dead for 1 watch.)” Come on man … is your soul dead? That’s fucking rocking. The chalice fills with black blood? Smear it on your forehead? I’m an SOOOO in. There’s a little bit of an over-reveal in the read-aloud/summary text, but when it happens it’s pretty light. “The rear wall glows hotly, the rock nearly molten. Before the wall, an enormous pile of ash. Before the ash, many jars of metal containing sacred oils.” Pretty kicking, even for some sacred oils. Did I mention the thing is extensively cross-referenced? And hyperlinked? I couldn’t really find anything mentioned that I thought “ i wish I knew where to find that at …”
So, I think this thing is really fucking rocking. A nice mundane-ish world punctuated by moments of pure terror. And I fucking hate it also.
Mother fucking white text on a black background. Extensive use of italics in sentences. And some goofy ass fucking font choices that seem custom tailored to make the fucking text hard to read. Fucking faux-gothic shit. Red fonts on a black background. You can go FUCK YOURSELF! And, man, those factions. I need like a one pager to keep the major shit straight for all of them. And the same again for the locations. Maybe both on the same sheet. So that when the party meets someone or I’m hacking something up from the wandering table I have the major shit ready to go, rather than thumbing through.
You are ABSOLUTELY going to have to put a little work in to this. Roll some wanderers up ahead of time and think about them a bit. Same for the “explore a hex” sites. Roll up thirty or so. (Gee, sure would be nice if the designer had this on their website/discord …) I’m pretty ok with this amount of work, given that this is a regional setting.
This is for some medieval OSR rpg. I might check out the main rules. Mostly, I think the OSR rules, chargen mainly, fit on one page, but, I might be down for this as a setting. In any event, this is a GREAT supplement for anyone with those rules, or anyone looking for a more human centric world … but with some monsters in it.
It’s also 321 fucking pages long. Wanderers start on page 35 … with most of what comes before not particularly useful, but for the extensive faction information that I already wish were shorter. Wanderers run 100 pages. Ouch. The main civilized locations are just a little too much. There is GREAT lite sections, bulleted, with quest-like things from some factions, etc, ranging from “i just met you “ to “ok, so, now that we’ve killed someone together, lets talk about some serious shit you could do for me …” I can’t help but think, though, that the formatting and layout used for the more civilized locales detracts a bit from running them well. I fucking lvoe towns/cities/etc and I’m not sure I could do this one justice, running it, given the way the information flow is organized. Could be, also, the use of whitespace and bullets, while generally a fine choice, is clashing somewhat with the goals of comprehension and reference in these sections. I don’t know. It’s just so fucking dense with gameable content. I need a little more formatting to get the shit flowing right.
This is $35 at DriveThru. The preview is a one pager and shitty. For $35 for a fucking PDF you can reach deep and give me a slightly better preview of what I would be, potentially, buying to help me make an informed decision.
By Franklin Hicks
Self Published
Shadowdark
Levels 1-3
A small village at the base of the mountain holds a terrible secret. Unknown to all but the village elder and the Shrine Keeper the villages goddess, Adeva, is actually a devil. Each year an innocent is sent to the mountain shrine to ‘join’ the Shrine Keeper. When the truth is they are destined to be a sacrifice to the devil. This years sacrifice, a dwarven boy named Orik, escaped the Shrine Keeper and fled into the mountain. Edwin Swift, the village elder will ask the players to venture to the top of the mountain to find the boy and return him to the mountain shrine. Little does he know that soon the Shrine Keeper will be dead and the villages secret on the cusp of being revealed!
This seventeen page single column adventure details a small dungeon with eleven rooms. Some nice ideas in this one, and a touch of or or evocative writing. It never goes goes far enough, though, in its writing or the logical consequences of things in order to bring the place to life.
This thing has some decent ideas in it, rather than just being another throw-away. The premise here is a village full of goody goodies. They live by a strict code of charity, asceticism and devotion to their protector goddess. Really good people, the way you wish religious people were. I mean, we can argue about the asceticism part, but, otherwise, you get the idea that we’ve got a nice little village here, and they truly like to help others. As a player this would SO set my teeth on edge. I’m ready to be drugged and wicker-manned and because of that I’m ready to start slitting throats and burning shit down on a hair trigger. And that’s a good thing. You’ve manipulated the PLAYERS through an in game thing. They are invested, and that can be quite rare indeed. Oh yeah, once a year they send a kid up to the mountain shrine to join the others up there in their Adeva religious order. KLast kid, though, got scared and ran off. Maybe you could help find him?
Really solid foundation there. And, like so many other things in this adventure, that really solid foundation is going to be fucked up by the designer. Subverting expectations, or appeals to imagination abound … but then are generally drug through the much of traditional RPG tropes, ruining things.
The kid is a little dwarf kid, and he’s run in to a kobold sorcerer … with a backstory. Great. So, look, we all recognize all of that shit as crap, right? It’s some kind of fucking excuse to throw in some kobolds in the mountain shrine. And, that kid, he was about to be sacrificed by the shrine when the sleep drug wore off and he ran off. LAME. Just an excuse to include the kobolds. THis could have been so much better with a little more thought. The village gets almost no attention at all. Turn up the charm. Get the party in to the mood, or either being paranoid as all fuck or loving the place. Throw in a couple of (very) short vignettes and NPC’s. Bring that pat of the adventure to life. Then get rid of all that “he was almost sacrificed” shit. He just ran off because he missed home, or got lost or some kind of shit. This allows the party to get invested, have some mountain encounters, and then get to the shrine, Turn up the paranoia there. THEN you can turn the entire thing in to what it is, once the party clues in. You can some dips and rises here, which are just not present.
There are hints of good things though in almost every room. One of the wanderers on the way up the mountain are the bloody remains of a mountain goat on the trail … fortelling a mountain lion. All of the wanderers get that little bit of extra to help the DM bring the encounter to life. And we get little snippets of good descriptions, like a sacrificial dagger is wrapped in a gold trimmed red cloth. That’s a good detail. It brings it to life in the mind. Or a small leather book on a bench … with three spells in it, like a scroll. Good little description, nothing complex, recalling all of the little leather bound ratted up books in bookstores and movies and the treasures and secrets they contain. A description that is overloaded, alluding to more than there is on the written page. And to use it as a scroll, instead of just saying “scroll with three spells?” Perfect. Or, skeletons in a jail cell, manacled up … who struggle to free themselves. There’s great tension there.
But the issues here are pretty major, beyond the nonsensical plot design, missed opportunities and mismatch in tone. The read-aloud over reveals, destroying that back and forth between the players and the DM. The DM text gives details on the mundane. “Bed. The small bed is neatly made and has several thick wool blankets.” That does nothing for the DM. You lean on the DM to provide that sort of information while the designers role is to tel lus why THIS kitchen/bed/etc is different and relevant to the adventure. Backstory is embedded “the last remaining embers in the brazier have died out.” Well no fucking shit they have. Or, phrases are repeated between the read-aloud and DM text, telling us, for instance, that there are faded and tattered red & gold banners hanging on the wal … repeatedly. This, instead of, say, working a description that ended up as “On the other side of the portcullises is a dead kobold lying in the center of the hall. A faceless statue stands on the south end.” Joy to you! Or, a glyph glowing with purple light … with no real details on it. I’m gonna ask what the fuck it looks like. Don’t leave me hanging Mr designer! And, of course, the fact that the goddess here is a Erinyes. Who can actually grant boons. The implications are staggering!
This is not just a generic garbage adventure. There are bots and pieces of imagination and evocative descriptions that shine through. But, it’s not consistent enough. There’s not enough of them, and the missed portions, the straining of disbelief … there’s just too much of that and not enough of interest. Maybe next time?
Also, put the fucking level in the marketing blurb!
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1. The preview is broken. ?
By James Floyd Kelly
The Tabletop Engineer
Generic?
"Low Levels
The best stories told by Niloshis the Whisperer here at the Dented Helm Tavern seem to always involve a theft. That old half-elf sorcerer has got a never-ending supply of wild tales. The Lair of the Battle Mage, for example… it’s one of my favorites and the one that’s been asked for tonight. Yes, a detail or two will sometimes change, but the heart of the story? That’s always consistent. Here – have a seat. It looks like he’s beginning his tale…
This 36 page adventure details a wizards tower with five floors. It’s over verbose, over explains, and doesn’t really have any treasure in its boring environments. Yet Another Boring Wizards Tower.
I don’t know how to do this one. Maybe walk you through it from the beginning? That doesn’t seem right. But, this thing seriously has me down in the dumps. The … futility of looking for that shining planet known as Earth.
We start with the usual “feel free to modify this adventure to fit your campaign” shit that prefaces all adventures. This is followed up by the page long backstory telling us all about some wizard that we don’t really care at all about. “The auction houses implored him to seel off part of his magical treasure collection!” Sure. Whatever. So far this is just the usual bad adventure stuff. Or, rather, maybe, the usual de rigour adventure shit that people feel compelled for some reason to include in their adventure serving to pad it out. Then comes a page of plot hooks. Number one is to change the location of the adventure from the city of Windblade to the city the party is currently in. Not a hook. But ok. Number two tells us to push the party to the city of Windblade by having the party encounter ex-members of the wizards adventuring group. This shit goes on and on. There are no real hooks in the adventure included. Just Ooo, maybe there’s treasure inside! Adventurers like treasure! Or maybe someone gives the party a reward for going inside! Or, maybe, they some gossip in the local tavern! No hint of what it couldbe or how to run it. Well, ok, there’s a handout. But really this hook is just “Maybe they get the handout in a tavern as gossip. I really can’t emphasize enough how useless these “hooks” are. More so than usual. It’s not even a caravan guard idea. That would be FAR more specific than anything here. It’s fucking weird man. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before.
Then we get a full page write on The Searchers, and the ex members of it. That could have been in one of the hooks. I have no idea. Am I really supposed to be using that hook? Is this the designers old pc party that he is Mary Sue’ing in to the adventure? Whatever. Let’s ig nore that also.
Then we get a full page write up on the local thieves guild and how they are watching the tower, and have been round the clock for two fucking years. When the local spies see the party goin then dude sends two thieves in after them. Not the worst idea on earth, but, also, anentire page for this? Sure man, whatever.
Then we get a description of the tower. I guess that’s what this next page is. It starts with “To say that Ploren Darkstream was over-protective of his book collection and magic items is an understatement. While Ploren had no desires for lichdom or any post-death modifications to his body, he was sincere in his desire to protect his possessions for all time, including his body.” So … not a description of the tower. Some kind of backstory or justification nonsense. The entire page is a waste except the last paragraph. The tower sits in the NE chunk of the city wih some stables to the left and a burnt out warehouse to the right. At night you can see candles in the the two windows, up high and sometimes hear wood sawing from inside. That’s it. Urban? I guess so … I mean, it is a city. SOmething across the street or behind it? Crowded street? Out in a field on the outskirts? No clue.
We finally, then, get to the two page description of the front fucking door and getting in. The read-aloud, in italics of course, tells us that “To enter the watchtower it appears that one must go through the front doors. No windows or other entrances are visible on the ground floor.” No. I refuse. There’s a window on the third story? That’s what the fuck they make rope for. But, no, we’re forced in to the front door, which must be picked. It does have a nice little section called “Observations.” This tells us that a candlelight flickers from the topmost window. That You can hear carousing from a tavern two blocks away, and that randos walk by every few minutes and you can smell burnt wood from some nearby warehouse ruins. This is quite nice. We won’t ever get anything quite this nice,in terms of scene setting, any time else in this adventure. By far. It’s also, I think, out of place. The lead in, with the read-aloud telling us we have to go in to the front door, is wildly misplaced. We should have started with this setting information and then transitioned in to the door. Also, I guess we’re kind of in the city since people wander by and the Guards can show up if you are obviously picking the door? Doesn’t sound realistic to me, but, again, whatever.
Inside we get three pages describing the twenty foot hallway. Then a bunch more pages describing the first floors giant room (one room per floor here, the hallway making the first floor have two is an exception.) Wizoo McWizardson was such a bad ass that his protective spells, for the first floor, involve a skeleton with a crossbow. Seriously? A skeleton with the crossbow? Melt the wall of reality, command tears in the fabric of existence. But, your protective spell ia skeleton with a crossbow? I LOATHE the fact that wizards towers never FEEL like a wizards tower.
Ok, I’;m out. The read-aloud massively over reveals in every room. Your Call To Adventure (an explicit section heading in each room) in one level is to “survive the traps in the room. Survive the awakened crossbow-wielding skeletons. Move to the second floor.” A call to adventure indeed! Where “Adventure” is defined as Monotony and a lack of interactivity.
The fabulous fucking treasure that the wizard is known for? A set of gauntlets and a shield. Oh, and a small leather pouch with some gold coins in it. The GM is encouraged to put a value on some of the books in the library. “The GM may also use the desk as a source of a magic item or some treasure for the players to discover.”
I loathe my life.
This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages and shows you nothing of consequence to make a purchasing decision.
The link to the product in this review is probably an affiliate link. If you follow the link and buy the product, I make some money. Just thought you should know.
