tenfootpole.org

By Scott Taylor
Art of the Genre
1e/5e
Levels 1-3

Valoria, jewel of the world of Mythras…  This ancient and fabled city is home to more than fifty thousand inhabitants, but little does that matter to the downtrodden who find refuge in the Patina Court.  Once a place of high magic, now little more than a forgotten slum, this neighborhood holds more adventure and mystery than one might think.  Can your players discover all its secrets?  Will they be able to face the challenges of refuse strewn cellars, newly haunted crypts, and enchanted wizard towers?  Only time, ingenuity, and dice will tell.

This 32 page adventure presents a small district in a town, a kind of home base district, and three short adventures in it. The few short building descriptions aren’t too bad, but the adventures are almost generic and lack any sort of depth or interest to them. 

We’re going for a Starting Home Base vibe here, except its in one district of a larger city. You’re advised to start the characters off almost broke, with just like 2gp each, in order to prompt them to adventure. The designer explicitly invokes the old Conan is Always Broke theme, and it’s not bad as a starting gimmick. The starting district has a few interesting quirks to it, the exact thing it should have, for a DM to use to leverage during their game. We’ve got a low-rent hostel, run by an ex-guardman, who carries around a cudgel and isn’t afraid to use it. Great! Thats the kind of flophouse I want in my game for my first levels! Lots of good ways to improve little scenes; maybe he’s a cheery guy to the paying guests but the party sees him kicking out someone who hasn’t paid, as their introduction. A juxtaposition! And there’s a tavern that serves the leftovers from a nicer place … and a popular outhouse out back where you can return their somewhat rancid fare. And, we’ve even got an nic little built in enemy, The Teller Gang, These are the local toughs, there to cause trouble, do a protection racket, and generally be foils for your beginning characters. Again, great opportunities here for inserting little scenes and interactions with the party. They are all written, relatively terse, and in such as way that they are an inspiration to a DM. And this is what you want with these kind of NPC’s and locales in town, things that inspire the DM to drop in little bits and pieces and interactions. This is one of the stronger parts of the booklet. I would say Not So Strong To Warrant A Purchase On This Alone … except … I love stealing shit for my cities and the hostel, tavern and maybe even the gang are stealable. So, sure, I might buy it just because I want to steal those parts for my game, without the district as a whole. 

We then start to fall down. A lot. The three little adventure provided are meant to be used with Dwarven Forge, which alone implies they will not be too large. And they are not, just a coupe of rooms in each, maybe seven or so at most. We get an adventure in the basement of the tavern, hunting rats, errr, giant ants. A trope so tropey as to be a meme. And really perfunctory. There’s almost not detail down there. Oh, there’s read-aloud, in the much hated and should never be used second-person format. But the rooms proper are really just an excuse, in each, to fight a giant ant or two. Nothing more. “Your light source bounces oddly off heaps and stacks Almost inch by inch, you plow, pull, tumble, and climb farther back into the monstrosity that is the Rancid Cellar.” Ok sure. 

And the treasure provided is NOT 1e. The final boss in one of them, a 6HD (!) crypt thing, has 47 silver pieces. In another place you find a single gold and pearl earring. There is almost n treasure at all in this, which begs the question: how do you level? Or, even, pay the rent in the hostel for another night. 

There are skill checks, like making four charisma checks to get some rumors to find out where to go next. Blech! I hate it when the roleplaying elements are reduced to simple die rolls. This is the heart of the game! Not cool man.

In the Crypt adventure you know that two gravediggers went missing. In one room you find two fresh zombies. But there are not details given. Just two fresh zombies and some advice to conduct a jump scare. This is a MAJOR missed opportunity. Those dudes should have names. They were the Maltese Falcon f the adventure. But, we’re not even really told it IS the two gravediggers, there’s just the implication that they are since the zombies are fresh. We really need a beter description of them, other than “fresh zombie” and something else. A family, or some mystery or something to springboard more play off of. It’s like the adventures, proper, are divorced from the town above them, as if they have no relation to them. Instead they should be integrated in to the town, and used to bolster, further, the town play.  

Obviously, I’m not a fan of the adventures, although some of the town locations are decent for stealing. (And, as always, I’m enamored with town play, so keep that in mind.) And, not really a 1e adventure but a 5e, I’d say.

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. That’s not much, but you do get to see the hostel and a couple of NPC’s. Check em out!

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/188423/The-Folio-8-1E–5E-Format-DF1?1892600

Hey, yo, I also snagged Highdark Hall. It’s not an adventure, but rather a manor home/estate for a gothic roleplaying game. Think Jane Eyre the RPG … except this is just a location to use in any period RPG. It’s got a GRET floorplan, lots of people, including the servants, an estate to go with the hall, and a lot of rumours. It could be used either for more fantastic games, with some spell slinging occults, or cultists, or in a more mundane fashion as well. If you wanted a supplement that detailed a country manor for a period game then I’d give it a look. It’s pretty well done, as a resource for a a place to run adventures IN.

By The Fictionaut
Stellagama Publishing
OSE
Level 1?!

The largest metropolis in the continent is burning! The emperor amassed the largest mercenary army seen in history without the funds to maintain it, and now companies of sellswords unleash their wrath and greed upon the city. Whatever the reasons that lured you to the Great City, you now must escape before ending as a corpse littered on the streets, enslaved by opportunists, or worse; and if that wasn’t enough a host of frost giant Vikings is approaching the city with ill intentions!

This 75 page product details the party escaping a city under siege. It is a toolkit, not an adventure. The generators are bland while the specifics are quite interesting, if long winded and a little … Ironclaw? I dub thee Not An Adventure.

The greatest city on the planet is burning and under siege and in civil war. Toss in a bunch of looting. Toss din an imperial army. Toss in a fuckton of mercenary factions, including a fuck ton of neighborhood watches. Oh, also, Frost Giant Vikings are about to land and destroy everything. You should be leaving now …

A buried little piece of text tell you that you have about encounters, on average before you get to the city gates to escape, so you’ll be doing seven-ish things if you are just moving toward them. There is a random table to roll on to see what you encounter. This can, for the most part, be pretty mundane. You meet looting mercenaries, or the neighborhood watch, or an army patrol, or a trap set by a former resident, or something like that. There are not many details, at least not many in the way of specifics to help bring the encounter to life.It’s the kind of abstracted stuff that is hard to work with. When it DOES get specific, in a few special locations, it can get pretty interesting. “Some fools thought it was a good idea to defile a crypt, angering restless spirits which now run rampant on the streets. In most cases, these will be intelligent wights who fight as the legionaries of eras pasts” I fucking love some chaos and this thing can bring that. We’ve got some dudes in church doing some sacrificing, or taking it over in the name of new gods, or some gladiators/athletes trapped in a sauna … but ready to join up and help you rumble. This is all great. Specific, without necessarily being too long winded. You really get the idea the designer was trying to get across to you, the vibe of the encounter. And that allows you to run it pretty well. And when the adventure is doing this it’s great. There’s a list of potential rival adventurers in the back that is stellar. Exactly the kind of thing you want to hang your hat on. And there are notable places around town … with a lot of platinum, that are interesting as well … although perhaps out of place in the sheer length of the descriptions and the cumbersome way that would cause the adventure to run.

So the random encounters, that make up the bulk of the adventure, I think, are quite abstracted, in general, unless you get the specials. And then it’s also abstracted but more interesting than “a faction looting homes.” But, man, this thing …

The city has 117 harbors. (There’s no map, this is a pointcrawl, in that you’re having sevenish encounters on the table. I think it’s like rolld 2d6 for the number of encounters it takes to get to a gate.) There’s not much details on the various districts, except to note that one of them is inhabited by mimics, and people keep them as pets also. Yes, it’s one of those. As far as decadent capitol of a great empire goes, I’m kind of ok with it here. A monkey man is The Last Legionnaire or the former empire, come from far away to beg the new empire for help in their desperate final days … but caught up in politics. Not bad. There are a lot of weirdo creatures though, so be warned.

But, back to the lack of focus. The party doesn’t know how long till the frist giants get there. Or how long it will take to get out of the city. WHich makes planning hard. It’s a timer, but not exactly a timer and I’m not sure how I feel about this, from a pacing and fairness standpoint. 

The various factions also have a tiered escalation list. From they don’t know about you to the cops stopping you, to them hunting you, to them putting a big reward on your head. I like this, and I like it existing the chaos of the city. I just don’t see it working well in 7-ish encounters.

And that’s the problem with most of this. I just don’t see it working. There’s is A LOT of content. And it’s abstracted. I you’re not going to get to … 90% of it? 95% of it? As a generic city thing it might be ok … if the city were in perpetual chaos. But as a ESCAPE the city thing? Most of it is not being used. And all of that mountains upon mountains of backstory and motivations are lost. 

Is this a city supplement? Or a escape the city supplement? It doesn’t seem like the designer quite had the focus to decide. Adding more specifics  to, say, a dozen or so encounters, in a true pointcrawl/map style, would have been better, I think. Then you might get something like Slumbering Ursine. But, as this is, it’s a toolkit. And this in spite of the blurb right up front that says “Our goals are primarily to publish enjoyable and immediately playable supplements, settings, rulesets, and adventures for our fellow players and referees.” Not this time, I think. 

Here’s an example of one of those abstracted encounters: “Panicked riding mounts or beasts from a menagerie escape from their enclosure and run amok in their frenetic attempts to achieve freedom or survive. If the PCs do not want to be trampled, they must make a Breath Weapon Saving Throw, and if someone fails, they will take 2d8 points of damage. In case of success the Referee must roll 1d6 to see which kind of creature they do engage or if they have to fight at all: 1d6 (1-2=No beasts to fight; 3= 1d4-1 Basilisk; 4= 1 Grisly Bear; 5=1d4 Flame Lizard; 6= 1d6 Terror Bird).”

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages. There’s not really anything in that to help you make a purchasing decision, at all.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/455885/escape-from-miklagard?1892600

I also bought “25 Apparitions, Spirits, and Hauntings”. It was just a generic monster manual of ghosts and one page of generic Whats haunted and why. I was hoping for some tragic unique stuff, but instead got genericism.

By Dave Chenault
Troll Lord Games
Castles & Crusades
Levels 4-6

Goblins have fallen upon the town of Oorerestberg, besieging the walls and gate. And in the chaos and fear Gisella von Gripp, a druid of some renown, calls for aid in securing a wonderous books of potions. This to keep it from the goblins and others she deems unfit!

This 23 page adventure describes three scenes: a quick explore of a simple tower in a town under siege, a chase through town once the attackers are in, and then a finale in a ruined monastery outside of town. It’s the Trolls usual style, which just means info dumps of text in paragraph form with victorian inventories and perfunctory descriptions. In a 23 page adventure.

The Trolls are who they are. As is Northwind. I like to poke my head in sometimes to see what’s up; a good adventure CAN transcend publisher idiosyncrasies. But those are few and far between and remain so.

Ok, you’re in a town. It’s under siege by goblins about to break in. While running through a square someone else, running also, stops you and says she needs to grab a prayer book from that tower right there to bring to her master defending the walls. If you refuse she uses her Cloak of Charm Humanoids on you. That’s nice, eh? I don’t like it when things are that convenient. It reminds me of all of those DUngeon mystery adventure where the villain has sixteen magic items in order to prevent you from casting the first level spell you need to discover them. Anyway, you go in with her or perhaps after her when an old servant inside comes out yelling Thief! Thief! You go through some boring rooms, maybe get attacked by a pet mimic (again, ug!) and then discover shes escaped with the book. You chase her through the streets, having five encounters from a random table. The encounters have nothing to them other than “2d6 goblins” or “1d10 townfolk.” EVerything else is left up to the keeper, even though this would have been better handled by just stating out some encounters for the party to have. Why make this random? It’s not a wanderer, meant to push the party, it’s just that five of these WILL happen. Why not just describe them in a way that makes sense and brings some life to the adventure? Anyway, you come to the gate out and there COULD be a mass battle, and it COULD include some townfolk you might have picked up from the two suggested static encounters. Kind of nice there as they huddle close to the party, the kids get in the way of your feet they are so close, the men try to help and get slaughtered, the women don’t try to help and get slaughtered. No good deed, eh? Would have been nice if the townfolk had a little character. But there’s none provided, they are generic. You get outside and track her through some snow, that is now falling, to a ruined monastery nearby. Stabstab stab, the end.

Along the way we get EXTENSIVE backgrounds. Otherwise how are filling those 23 pages? The thief  gets several paragraphs of backstory. This is one: “Gisella is a worshipper of Toden, long ago disparaged in this area. She has been tasked by her superiors with coming to this area and reestablishing Toden’s influence. She has been here for a decade or more and has had little success in doing so. She has intended to leave for quite some time and now, with the city about to be slaughtered and potentially herself along with it has finally decided to leave.” Yeah, nothing there that is gameable. Wasted effort.

Our room descriptions frequently will be in Victorian inventory style. Here’s one he paragraphs hat describes the basement: “The basement contains, 3 chairs, a broken table, a brass candelabra, some sheets, a clothes rack, some pans, a pile of broken glass, an old rug, 4 lanterns and a lamp. There are 10 boxes of various sizes. Half are open and none locked. They contain sheets, cloths, winter clothes, incense burners, vials of oil, candles and candle holders, a sheaf of clean papers, dried inks, pans, rotten fruit and other assorted used or forgotten household items.” None of that is useful. None of that is important. None of that contributes to a feeling of realism. It’s just tedium. 

And our rooms generally start with some kind of backstory. Again, not in any way gameable or relevant to whats happening NOW: “This room was once used for study and prayer. When located, everything in it was piled in the center and burned or dragged outside and burned, thus very little remains. However, years ago a deeneert made his home here and left some treasure when he went off on a hunt. The demon was subsequently killed.” There’s no real formatting other than paragraph breaks and some indenting for read-aloud. Other than that, its just paragraph after paragraph of long form text for you to wade through while running the adventure.

The trolls are who they are at this point. You should know what to expect by now.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You do get a good sense of what to expect from it, so it’s a good preview.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/240689/castles-crusades-the-burning-firmament?1892600

By James S. Austin
Tacitus Publishing
OSE
Level 7

Magic offers the chance to do amazing things.  But one who practices the arts should be mindful of the proper methods to manipulate the Weave.  One such soul paid the price for his attempts to reach beyond the mortal veil, experimenting with necromancy.  His untimely death has left behind an active circle, continuing to pull upon the corruptive energies.  The lingering effects now bring great harm to those who draw too near.

This twelve page “Q-Encounter presents four ghouls and two wraiths for the party to stab, in one encounter. It is exactly what you think it would be, based on that description. 

I’m working through my wishlist! That means those of you waiting for a review of that $200 adventure, or that 600 page adventure, may begin to hope again! And, it also means I get to review things like this. Twelve pages for one encounter. One. And this isn’t even, like 4e or some nonsense, it’s OSE! That means it is essentially Basic D&D. Twelve pages! For one encounter in basic! The fucking Steading of the Hill Giant Chief was only eight!

We, of course, get a long ass background and lot of padded out pages at the start. In this edition of “Twisted Backstories” we find a necromancer who lives in a hut in the marshes, who make a permanent necrotic circle under the water and then dies. Then Two merchants get killed by bandits and thrown in the marshes … but one of them has a water fey ancestor so some fey reeds grow up around his body. This links the circle to some ley lines. This encourages four ghouls to settle nearby in a burrow and two wraiths to show up near/at the circle that is like twenty feet away. There’s a lot more detail than this. That is all useless. But, in typical Bad Adventure fashion the adventure goes on and on to justify the nonsense it is about. Just present it! Maybe a sentence if you need to, but just do it! It’s fucking D&D man, we’re not explaining quantum theory here.

The hooks are lame. Well, some of them. At level seven you get to go find a missing farmer. I got better things to do at level seven. There are, however, two that are more interesting. I might even call them rumours, or, perhaps, an interesting way of doing rumours that are presented as hooks here. Two fisherman, in the bar, talking about how they heard a crying baby in the reeds, paddling over they met a foul stench from the reeds and hurried off. Kind of nice. Lowkey. And, another that has weeping and moaning being heard and dark figures running amongst the trees. No travels after night anymore … I like the superstition leanings of these two. Creepy. But, yeah, “the local druid says the marsh has darkness in it …” Bleach.

Welcome to the adventure! You get four descriptions, of four different places, all up front, one after another, in long italics read-aloud. Hard to read. Then the read-aloud over-reveals details of the location. Or, to quote part of one “Bunched piles of bones and rotting flesh lay about with two recent kills, a male and female human, in the center—bite and claw marks showing a violent end for both.” It starts strong, yeah? Nicely visceral. And then we get to the male and female and bite and claw stuff, which is too much detail for a quick room scan. And then we get a little “the novelisation of the game” with the Showing A Violent End garbage. 

Ok, so, you got four sections of read-aloud, all in a row and then some tactics, day and night, for the four ghouls and two wraiths. Then you find out they have 257gp of treasure, meaning that the designer has absolutely no idea how OSE works. Joy. It’s just a conversion hack job. 5E, PF1, PF2 and OSE. Fuuuuuuck You! 

That $200 600 page adventure is looking a lot better right now … I know, this is my own fault. But, really, Tacitus? Just goes to show you …

This is $1 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Otherwise you wouldn’t buy it, yeah?

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/473353/beneath-the-reeds-ose?1892600

Eon Fontes-May
YouCanBreatheNow Games
OSR
Level 1

Buried ‘neath a forgotten landslide, deep under the foothills, is a ruined cloister with a secret. Long ago, nestled into the mountain there, it is said that a true saint lived and died. The pious woman never spoke a single untruth from the moment she drew breath, and the gods blessed her to continue speaking truth afterward. Old folks whisper that the Healdess Saint is still enthroned down there in her lightless cathedral. They say that if you bring her a skull then it can be made to answer questions, truthfully, from beyond the grave.

This seven page adventure uses two pages to describe about 23 rooms in a buried nunnery. There are a lot of interesting ideas in this, but, also, it lacks descriptive thrust and, perhaps, is a little low on interactivity beyond some basics. But the ideas here, the basic concepts and some of how they are implemented, are quite intriguing!

We’ve got this convent. It’s buried, they say. They also say that if you take a skull to it then you can make it answer questions. SWEET! I love that kind of oracular shit as an adventure hook. There’s so many command words and things to know in D&D, and why not exploit the mythos with some ripping of knowledge from the beyond? 

Approaching, you see just the top of a tower, nothing more. Cause it’s buried, duh. Although, a short distance away you can find some exposed roof tiles … thus you have two ways of breaking in, both of which could involve some crowbar action. I approve! There’s a three floor tower, buried, along with a flourish floor connected building (the roof tiles, duh.) And, thus, the convent. The map supporting this is a charming little affair, with little bits of drawing and notes on it to help the DM run it. Monsters and major room features are noted, along with a note or two like “rotting floor” or “bodies” next to a pile of little bodies. There’s a few ways up and down between levels also, and a few hard to get to places because of that. This is a great fucking map, in all respects, especially for a smallish 23 room dungeon. The notations and illustrations help run the place and the map complexity contributes to an exploratory vibe. Quite nice.

And then we’ve got this starving nun, who goes cannibal, and thusly turns in to a ghoul. And her fellow sisters take down doors and such to build a barricade to keep their fellow away. Pretty sweet! As well as the bodies intertwined who took poison. (Second time in a short while in my reviews for that one, eh?) 

Steal some of those gold candelabras and holy symbols from the dead bodies and really go after looting those religions items. (WHat are those called? Not relics? Just the normal religions shit you’d find in a church?) Anyway, stuff em in the loot bag. And, there are some decent non-book items. LIke a skull to carry around, or a warhammer in a stylized skull. Or an actual skull used as a mace. Hmm, lots of skull theming here. 😉 Anyway, nice little bits and bots here and there, both in the mundane treasure and the magical, and mixed in to some more generic items of both types. I like the extra effort, I just wish there were more.

My major problem is two fold: the descriptions and the interactivity. There is a general “always on” description note at the top of the encounters page, and since it’s only two pages long, it does help a bit with atmosphere. But this is generally to the exclusion of much other in the way of a room description. And, the interactivity is a little lacking as well. But, the monsters descriptions are all generally on a monster reference sheet. So what is the room description doing? That’s a great question. One room tells us that “The dormitory staircase hides a secret tunnel that the abbess used to sneak around and snoop on the young women in the convent.” Ok, so, thats very nice, but also, it’s backstory and not really relevant. It’s SUPER interesting though. It goes on “It’s very hard to spot, but a hinged panel leads to a cramped passage filled with spiderwebs and insects.” Ok, so, now we’re cooking! Cramped, spiderwebs, insects. Got it! Hinged panel is great. Hard to spot is not useful, if a secret passage; the default is hard to spot. Then “The tunnel remained mostly sealed and is disgusting but harmless.” Again, another pretty useless sentence. It’s backstory. It’s justification. “It continues for 150ft until a trapdoor in the ceiling that leads to the rectory. Area 18)” I’m not getting the disgusting part of this. Cramped, spiderwebs, ok. Cramped is good but spiderwebs and insects could use some beefing up. The hiinged panel is great. The rest is … meh. Maybe keep on or two concepts here, but you need to work them in differently. They can’t be the main focus, and they are in this description. We need more about the webs and insects. 

And this is not an isolated room. A great many of them are like this. It is integrating shit like that well, to create an interesting product TO READ … but we’re here to play. And the descriptions tend to not be focused on that. “The storage basement was accessible only by a hidden trapdoor, but now lies exposed by the hole left behind when a derrogar fell from the ladder.” Again, I could live my life forever without the first clause, but the second is decent. It needs more of that, with better descriptive use of adjectives and adverbs to bring the environment to life. To this end, the interactivity is all modeled after stabbing things. There’s some interesting lead ino, or follow through, from stabbing things. But it’s mostly just stabbing things. A potential rats nest of treasure, literally, telegraphs a rat attack. That’s great! But, also, a puzzle with the solution of “tell the skull seven secrets” that you learn the answer to in another room, while decent in concept, is not enough to carry an entire adventure.

So, again, a GREAT deal of promise here. The room descriptions need strong edits to retain their charm and add an evocative environment. And the interactivity could be more varied, especially given the exploratory nature. I’m a little perturbed by a couple of padding pages that add nothing much, but I’d get over it if the room descriptions were a little better. These little things are, I think, showing some interesting promise, they just more hard work on the core of it: the room descriptions and interactivity. I could be generous with a No Regerts here, but I’m not going to be.

This is $4 at DriveThru. You get three pages of preview, including the map page. A page of descriptions would have been good. 

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/471619/the-buried-convent-of-the-headless-saint?1892600

By Tom Garner
Crawler Solo
B/X
Levels 1-3

Your party is approached by a local storyteller who spins a tale about the empty and overgrown Palace of Evendur, once home to a powerful planar travelling wizard, who went missing more than a life-time ago. The players must unravel the mystery of the palace, erected at the edge of a strange and enchanted forest…

This thirteen page adventure uses four pages to detail a small “palace” with ten rooms. It does everything wrong. But, also, it does it wrong is a kind of classical way. You know, the way some kind-hearted but well meaning person might. But it’s still wrong. And unusable.

A five paragraph long read-aloud starts off our hook, with a bard dude offering you 30gp to go look at this disappeared wizards home and solve the great mystery: why did the wizzo build his “palace” on the edge of the woods? Not what I’d call a great mystery, but whatever. After many pages of worthless padding later, we get to room one.

And are confronted again by a long section of read-aloud. This is the norm for this adventure. You need to wade through it. It says things like “You are standing before …” or “You are in a large throne room …” Rom after room. And then sentence after sentence after that. “Upon the throne appears to be …” Every read-aloud makes an appearance. Too long. Using boring descriptive wors like large. Things APPEAR to be. Over-revealing details of the room. As well as the perspective thing. 

Then comes the stat blocks. A full on stat block, inline with the text, in full MM glory. Including Treasure Type and description. This gets in the way, actively, of trying to understand the text of the room in order to run it. At one point I think I waded through a page and half of text, only to find out that there was a notable chandelier in the room, in the next to last paragraph. Well, fuck. And it’s important. And it’s not in the read-aloud. Well fuck me. This is a textbook example of why that kind of shit should not be done. 

You’re looking for a key, it turns out, so you can get in to the garden room on the half moon. No real clue that’s what you need to do, but that’s what you need to do. When you kill the armor in room two (4HD, surrounded by a bunch of 2HD flying swords. And a 4HD murder rug. At level one …) it drops the key. 

After slogging through room after room of things artistically saying “what’s the password?” then you meet a kindly dryad in the garden who tells you her tragic tale, and then returns to her tree. But, wait, the missing wizzo planned for this! The tree dies! She’s now driven insane! Kill her! Yes, this is the way of this adventure. Play by fiat. And not the good kind of philosopher-king. The bad kind.

Let’s see. It has almost no monetary treasure. At all. But, you do get three wishes, as a party, when you go in! You don’t know it, but you do. Also, all three good types of crystal balls are stuffed up a chimney in one of the rooms. Three of them. In fact, the whole place is littered with magic items. And maybe … 500gp of mundane treasure? Until you kill the dryad. She has “treasure type D” buried under her tree.

Why? Why would you do this? Why would not just roll the treasure and put it here? Why tell us it’s D? You put fucking treasure in to every other room. Why would you not put it in to that room also? The main room? 

This is fully representative of The Bad Old Days. When T$R shoved things down our throats. When the interactivity in an adventure was strained. It’s weird, both this and the previous review were, I think, straining the boundaries of kiddy D&D, that slur that folks used to described BASIC to differentiate it from their 1e master. It’s the full on Eliminster “Heel!” thing. Neither adventure go fully there, but they are getting really close to it. It’s not the whimsy and wonder of an OD&D game, but a writing and orientation to a simplistic interactivity. Not in just stabbing. But in blatant passwords and find the blue key syndrome. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1.30. The preview is six pages. You get to see some of the padded intro and the first room, as well as part f the second. That should be enough to tell you what you are signing up for. 

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/470618/the-palace-of-evendur-basic-adventure-module?1892600