tenfootpole.org

By Malcolm Harbrow
Self Published
Call of Cthulhu

Howard Elbridge, a writer of weird fiction, has disappeared. Looking into his disappearance, the investigators will uncover his links to Miskatonic University’s “daring” set, and the history of a mysterious painting.

This 22 page investigation is … the usual Call of Cthulhu stuff? The usual adventure with the usual wordiness and lack of care in usability. Yeah? 

We haven’t check in on the big boy for awhile. Let’s see what he’s up to! Here’s one that is, quote “a Refreshingly different mystery… Excellent low-key investigation with a claustrophobic feel” according to another review site, as quoted by the product blurb on DriveThru. I’m sure the marketing is correct. It must be, right?! Off we go!

We’ve got a nice timeline, along with when recent newspaper stories appear. That’s good! And a nice selection of handouts. I always appreciate handouts in adventures. More adventure, D&D or no, should include them. They’re fun. Soak them in tea and burn the edges! The main plot is … fine, I guess? People get trapped in a painting. If you stare at it long enough them you can get trapped also. Or, maybe, swap places with someone in it. There’s a line or two in the adventure which does a good job conveying a wolf-like creature chasing people in a maze. Indistinct, eerie, a nice little job of conveying that. That is, alas, the last  nice thing I have to say.

This is the usual Call of Cthulhu mess of an adventure. Everything done in paragraph form and just tossed in willy nilly. Repetition beyond belief. “As noted above (in “first impressions of the painting”), the painting is striking and disturbing, depicting a number of tiny yet terrified human figures fleeing through some sort of angular labyrinth, pursued by the shadowy impression of a wolf — or maybe a wolflike beast?” That description must be repeated about eight times int he adventure. I get it, man. I get it. Everything is just tossed in. The painting, murders, newspaper offices, breaking, a faux secret society and pi … it’s just all THERE, in their own sections. So, eventually, you get to a section heading for the secret society, or onefor the pi. These are nearly the last pages of the adventure. There’s absolutely no attempt to integrate things in to the adventure, to make it a cohesive whole. I can’t imagine the amount of page flipping required to run this. What’s the PI doing now? How about sticking it in the main text with some suggestions? Or, you can just say there’s a gruff PI and let the DM do everything else … as the adventure does. 

Seriously, it’s the designers job to assist the DM in running the adventure. I don’t HAVE to do what you tell me, but, also, its up to you, as the designer, to stick something in that I CAN use if I so desire. Give me something to work with! This is all abstracted ideas.
They might show at the apartment and ask questions” Well then have he two fuckers do that in the text for the apartment. Fucking Christ man.

And, of course, it’s the classic Call of Cthulhu “just write a paragraph” style. No use of whitespace or bullets or bolding or anything else to help call attentinto things and/or make the judges life easier when running the adventure at the table. Just write a paragraph and hoe someone printed this out and used a highlighter, I guess. There’s offset boxes to describe people, but, really, its all the same information that is also presented in the main text of the product. “If persuasion fails, they could try their luck with Hans Trager, Schneider’s underpaid assistant.” Well maybe tell us about him when you’re describing the shop, not at the very end of the description when we’re talking about success rolls? Jesus. Have you never set a scene? Have you never Run a Cthulhu adventure before? Do you think somehow that this mindless vomiting of text is somehow conducive to running things.

The adventure, proper, is pretty straightforward. Once you get in to his house, which is pretty immediate, you see the painting and his journal and its immediately obvious what is going on. It’s gonna take seven days, in the presence of the painting, for anything interesting to happen. This seems like a loooooonnnngggg time, given the depth, or lack thereof, of the investigation. This doesn’t seem to me like it will work.

Worry not, OSR crowd, Just about everything ever produced by the OSR at this than every Call of Cthulhu adventure ever made. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. Your four page preview shows you nothing of the adventure, making it impossible to judge ot before buying it, which is the purpose of a preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/417454/The-Wolf-in-the-Labyrinth?1892600

By Bill Barsh
Pacesetter Games & Simulations
1e
Level 1

A ship lies in the frozen tundra of the far north. Its history is lost in time, but its future may spell doom for unwary adventurers.

Fourteen rooms over a three level ship over four and a half pages. It’s a shipwreck in the middle of the frozen tundra of Lambeau. Not an abundance of text, or an abundance of interesting. It’s a throwback to the early days of the OSR.

Why your level ones are out and about in the frozen tundras, blizzards, and glaciers is not mentioned. And while I’m usually ok with some hand waving, if you’re writing an adventure in SHerwood featuring Robin Hood then it might take just a wee bit more the designer to help the DM fit the adventure in to the parties lives. But, anyway, you’re in the far north and you see a full on ship, in the tundra and snow, down in a valley. Being good little adventurers, you go investigate. There’s nothing really to keep you on the ship, except … there’s this white raven cawing loudly when you get in to room one, the main deck. If you kill it then a witch shows up and makes you go get some spider eggs from below in penance. No stats for the witch; we’re referred to another Pacesetter adventure for more information. Other than that, I might hack apart the deck of the ship to kill shit from above or burn the ship down and loot stuff later. You’re not gonna get rich here; maybe 1500gp in cash/goods. But, also, a nontrivial amount of magic. +1 armors and weapons. And a bow that fires a 3d6 fire arrow once a turn! And a ring that does a 4d6  ice storm! I’m no stranger to powerful magic at level one, running a campaign once where I gave four copies of every magic item in the 1e DMG in session one. But that was the point of that game; I’m not sure about this one. 

Barsh keeps his read-aloud pretty simple. “While most of the floor of the room is covered with ice, a pile of ballast stones rises to form a small mound near the north wall.” This is a theme throughout the adventure: pretty lackluster descriptions. There’s not much here to inspire. Time and again that is seen in the descriptions, both in the read-aloud and in the DM text. That extends to the interactivity in the adventure. There’s just very little going on here except stabbing the next room of monsters. There IS a healing hot spring … in the very last room. I’m just gonna need more, even at level one, than moving from room to room and stabbing monsters. Yes, that’s right, I said it, Icewind Dale WAS much poorer than Baldur’s Gate. 

The read-aloud, when it does go in to detail, engages in over reveal. A core element of D&D should be the back and forth between the players and the DM. The characters investigate, they ask questions of the DM and the DM describes something back to them. The longer read-alouds here reveal too much about an scene, thus destroying that critical back and forth game play element. Instead of telling us that an elf is slumped over, wearing tattered chainmail and wiedling x, y, and z, instead tell us of a body slumped, or a warrior slumped. Use the word budget to do better than slumped and warrior, though. Then, in the DM text, provide the DM the information so that when the players investigate they see more. We’re not trying to be obtuse, we’re instead spending our verbosity budget wisely. 

And then, there are the bits of DM text that over explain and pad out things with backstory. “The tundra orc chief calls this room his lair during the hunting trip. This orc is old and missing one eye. He knows the area and has hunted around the ship his entire life. He lets the younger orcs perform the hunting duties while he directs and plans the operations.” Fifty words. Eight of which are relevant to running this encounter. Prune it back and focus on the environment, the interactivity, evocative descriptions … things useful AT THE TABLE. This emphasis on background data is irrelevant, gets in the way of scanning and running the text, and could be used to make the adventure actually interesting.

I’d say all we’re missing is an “appears to be … “in the adventure but that’s present also.

Low loot. Low interactivity. Non-evocative text. Padded out text. And, yet, Barsh keeps the text tight, leaning toward minimalism, meaning that he’s still writing better adventures than most 

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages and you get to see almost half the rooms. Good preview for checking out the text quality.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/432773/The-Raven-and-the-Lone-Star?1892600

Lindsey Bonnette
Self Published
Generic/Universal
Level: 1?

A necromancer grows in power each day within their lair. Undead minions harass travelers and lurk at the edge of the village. Thanks to a magical artifact, the necromancer’s plans are expanding beyond raising the dead, and the forest will never be the same.

Fourteen pages of non stop excitement featuring an opossum necromancer in a magic hat! Marvel at the evocative descriptions and the clarity of writing! New design techniques bring forth endless possabilities!

This adventure, in the generic/universal category on DriveThru, has Signposts instead of lead-in encounters! And is not actually an adventure. It’s a Collection! And, before I get too cynical, I applaud the attempt to find some kind of meaning in the plot based adventure structure of the modern era. We don’t know what we don’t know, and it seems logical to imagine that there are better structures for conducting modern-era type adventures than the ones created for the more fun and fulfilling exploratory adventures from the beginnings of the hobby. Certainly, understanding “there is a plot” and trying to fit the adventure to that base assumption would fall in to line with one of the core tenants of the tenfootpole: we handle structure according to the specific needs of the adventure at that time. IE: we seldom need room/key for the village. And thus we’re open to experimentation and new types of things in order to fulfill the “promise” of these new adventure types. And thus Signposts, as clues and lead-ins to the main adventure locale. The whole “collection” thing seems dumb as fuck to me, in contrast with the concept of signposts, but, whatever. Language changes over time and words mean what we decide they mean right now. 

But they gotta work. Do they work here? I don’t know; I was too distracted by how shitty this thing was. 

The signposts are supposed to be things that kind of point you at the main adventure locale, the farmhouse. We get two tables for these: inside town and outside of town. The inside town table is, essentially, just a rumour table. People have gone missing in the forest. Walking skeletons sighted in the forest. Attacks .. throughout the forest. Get it?  Off to the forest you go. Blood trail leading to the farmhouse. Crows flying in the direction of the farmhouse. You ge the idea. The wilderness table  is 2d6, full of “none” entries and two monster attacks, alongside the “signposts.” I don’t know. I guess you just roll on it until you are bored and/or the party go to the farmhouse/get to that entry? 

It is, however, the entries themselves that are shitty. “Missing Persons: Travelers through the forest have gone missing, and people in town are talking about missing friends, relatives, and goods.” This is what passes for an encounter in this. For a signpost. “Hey, something could, you know, maybe happen that is somehow related to a missing person.” This is a shitty encounter. In fact, it’s NOT an encounter. I’m not even sure it’s an idea for an encounter, but we’ll get it the benefit of the doubt and say it is. You don’t get fucking paid to come up with ideas. You get fucking paid to put them down in a manner that helps the DM at the table. This means taking something generic and abstract and turning it in to something specific. Who, what , when, where, how, to steal from someone else. Bessy was afixinn to meander over to Ma Barkers with some blackberries yon morning. We found her basket and some blackberry stains over by the forest near where the crick meets that old stump where Eustice cut off his foot. You know, back in ‘63?” Give the fucking thing some fucking life. THATS what you’re fucking getting paid for. 

And all of the signposts are like that. Just abstracted garbage.  

Then we get to the adventure locale, the farmhouse. A few locations, maybe five? And they have page long descriptions Yeah! Who doesnt love fucking wading through a page long description with a fucking highlighter in order to be able to run an adventure. Worry not, though, folks, they’ve put a summary at the end of each description. I get the concept, but it’s done in a shitty manner, not really relevent to the room or running it. You can put a summary in, but then you need to reference back to the main text, with it, to make it a meaningful summary. Like, with bolding and such, so I can find things in the main text. 

Of course, it’s padded out. “The main room of the farmhouse acts as a study” DOn’t do this. Just describe a mainroom that is a study. The designer kind of does this, but that first sentence is padding. Or “This is Vesims corpse” Nope, again, stop telling up what you are about to do. Just do it. “This is Vesim’s corpse. Ophelia and her minions leave small gifts, bones and candles, for the corpse in return for the knowledge that Sage provides.” Excellent worldbuilding! But we don’t need to know WHY they do it. Just tellus what the room looks the fuck like. Like, what the gifts are. Stop abstracting, be specific, and do it in almost he same number of words … after cutting the padding out.

The main thing going on here is the magic hat. It’s turned the villain in to a necromancer! Except, when you get ahold of the hat is just gives you a +1 to magic skill checks. Lame. LAME! It gave necromancer powers to someone and yet, now, I’m getting a +1 to my skill check:?? Fuck your magic item gimping!

And, of course, the main villain is an opossum, who accidentally put on the hat and got sentient and named herself Ohpelia. We are supportive here, friends, of people playing D&D in different ways. Bunnies & Burrows was, I believe, a very early game. 1976 says rpggeek. We just don’t play D&D that way. But, also, they also deserve good adventures. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $5. There ain’t no preview, sucker! But you can get it for free since it’s PWYW.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/447568/A-Opossums-Hat?1892600

By Godmaker
Monthly Adventures
Generic/Universal
Level: ?

The us hope the publisher name is just poetic license, and not a threat to publish monthly …

In a small village of Lightwood there was a disaster. In the forest nearby a troll has settled. The PCs got to the village by accident, wishing to shorten the way. The villagers turn to PCs for help. This adventure seems like a simple monster slaying, but soon it turns into a detective story where the characters have to figure out why and who is behind The Mad Troll.

This 31 page digest adventure is a railroad plot. More boring than painful, at least for the players. For the DM it is drudgery. Enjoy your game of the majestic wonder of the imagination. 

Ok, gird your fucking loins. Here we go. Marky got with Sharon, who got Charese. Oh, wait, no. I mean … There’s this little demon. He figures out that in a temple under a village is an artifact that powers up demons. But demons can’t retrieve it. So, he hires a thief from the big city to steal it for him. But, the thief wants a lot of money. So he finds a troll and charms him in to attacking caravans, to get the money he needs to pay the thief. That convoluted piece of shit story is out background. As far as the adventure … The headman explains that a troll is attacking caravans in the nearby forest. He tells the party to go to the inn to stay the night. The innkeeper tells the party to go to the blacksmith for weapons and armor, and the party gets hired by a merchant in the inn to go get his papers from a wagon that the troll attacked. At the wagon the trolls attacks. This is a plot adventure so we get the advice of “Also, make sure that the PCs do not kill the troll in this episode, giving it a chance to escape in case of danger.” Perfection personified! The party has no control over the adventure. Perfect. Just what I wanted this morning. It’s a plot adventure, I know. It just amazes me that, in 2023, people still think that this railroad shit is ok. I mean, the entire adventure is a railroad, but, specifically, the escaping villain thing? What the fuck man?

Ok, party flees from the troll. In town the priest advises the party to seek out the witch in the woods; maybe she can help. Nevermind using logic here. Priests and witches have always gotten along. At the witch she charges 5gp for some powder to cure the trolls madness. Back in town, the party is arrested. The headmaster accuses them of stealing the towns gold from his house while they were away. The party is stripped of shit, tied up, and forced to investigate. Somehow they convince the headman that it wasn’t them. Then the thief, in disguise, tells the party he knows where the trolls cave is. There they kill the troll and/or demon. Adventure over.

It’s a plot adventure. Plot adventures suck ass. I’m sure there’s a good one somewhere; the exception to the rule. But this one isn’t it. Make sure the troll escapes. The party is arrested. All of this garbage for the same of the plot. Fuck you man, fuck you. The smith has Battle Acid in his shop. I guess that’s fantasy shit. 

The entire thing is in long paragraph form with absolutely no formatting beyond a paragraph break here and there. It’s a fucking nightmare to find anything. And the locations get described, then the people, then the plot. I’m sure this is for the dm’s benefit, but fuck me if its not a pain in the ass. Triple flipping between the plot, the location, and the NPC to figure out what is going on somewhere. 

There’s exactly one interesting line of description in the entire 31 pages: “On the ground near the front of the wagon is a stinking puddle of blood with a swarm of flies circling over it – all that remains of the horse.” That’s it. Nothing else is ever described well. Or, actually, described at all in most cases. It’s just page after page of text that describes text and backstory and is padded out to hell and bacl with no actual impact on the adventure. 

The thif from the big city? He keeps his horse, in the inns barn, saddled at all times. I suggest killing any NPC you meet who does that. It will simplify your life, as an adventurer, greatly.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $0. That’s too much to sell the precious moments of your life for. Maybe watch the grass grow instead. Or stare up at the stars. Or stare up at starlink. All far, far better uses of your time than this. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/455161/The-Mad-Troll?1892600

By Steve Johnson
Hex Games
OSE
Levels 3-7

Embark on a journey to the ancient and mysterious Temple of Yargolith, where forbidden knowledge and dark powers reside. Brave treacherous ruins and face off against deadly cultists as you uncover the secrets of the temple and confront agents of the powerful entity known as Yargolith. Beware, for those who dare to enter the Blasphemous Temple may never return.

This 114 page digest adventure contains a small village, a hex crawl, and a multilevel dungeon with about sixty rooms. It’s an assault on a cultist castle, and once they get wind of you then you’ve got about twelve turns before they finish sacrificing everyone and their god shows up. Good luck, Hackey McHackface!

Some chick hires you to go find her friend and her adventuring companions. They are off in some village in a jungle somewhere. You go there and find out they were there, disappeared in the jungle, and, oh yeah, that castle up on the mountain that glows red with the demon skull face on front is over there that direction also. Approaching it, they probably see you and start their mass blood sacrifice and twelve turns later their god shows up, all 50 foot tall and rampaging, if you don’t stop the sacrifice. I’ve got two general problems with the setup and flow of the adventure.

First, you’re hired. I know I’m not going to change anyones mind here, but I need to say it anyway: hiring is boring. This is akin to a quest giver in a crpg. “Collect 50 griffon wings and I’ll give you a pony!” It lacks motivation, and, more importantly, I think it removes a great deal of player agency and investment. Second, there is the issue of the alarm. Basically, you’re not even sure the adventurers you’re here to rescue are IN the fortress. And the fortress is pretty well run, so, they are gonna be pulling the fire alarm if they think they need to. And once they do then their god is popping off in twelve turns. So, you don’t REALLY know you’re on a timer and that timer is on a pretty hair trigger, as far as these things go. The parties only real chance here is to come in via the saves underneath everything, which is in a different hex (and, I think, non-trivial to discover) and then get up in the dungeons, first, and fuck with the cult gods tomb. In both this scenario, and in the frontal visit or “sneak in over the backside”, you’re playing the standard adventurer assault game: sneak/bluff until caught and then hack everything. I’m not morally opposed to any of this. It’s a hack and D&D has hacks. I think my problem with it is the lack of support for the obvious happening. Telegraphing the cults intentions a little more would go a long way to telling the party that they are, or will be, on a timer. Timers are fine, as long as you can figure out you’re on one. And I don’t think you can do that here. 

Order of battle for the alarm, is contained in the various rooms. There is a little section about “on alarm” or “at night” or “during the doomsday ritual” that changes up the room a bit. And then this is supported by a three page (!) timeline that covers those twelve turns between pulling the fire alarm and the god showing up. The in-room data is generally ok. It does have tendency to note the occupants of the room instead of the impacts of the room. If you are pouring oil on the front gate then it’s the oil pouring room that gets the detail and not the gate. This is always wrong. You need to know whats going on at the gate IN the gate description. But, the general concept it fine. It’s not overdone, doesn’t show up for each room, and is generally only used where needed, as it should be. The timeline, though, is a disaster. I mean, great in concept but poor in execution. “Frank and the guards start their search of the third floor” is not exactly an easy thing to run. You have to backtrack through the timeline to find things. If you end up on the third floor on turn eight, did Frank start his search there on turn to and is still there? Quick, go scan every entry before the current time! This could have been handled much better. It feels more cinematic than useful.

The layout and font are clear, with boxes used when need be. Bullets are used. Although … there is something going on with the line spacing or justification or something. It all kind of runs together. The bolding, italics and so forth, when they show up, don’t really contribute to comprehension. Your eyes glaze over. There’s just too many words, too many sentences, for each section. We’re talking a page or half page devoted to some simple concepts. The text overexplains, justifies things, and engages in padding … with if/then padding being particularly common. II’m absolutely certain the editing and layout on this were pretty good. It shows. It’s consistent and, as I said, there are parts of it that are easy on the eyes. But, unfortunately, no one told them what to shoot for. And, given that, they didn’t put something together here in layout and editing that  made the adventure easy to run at the table. Easy to scan. Easy to pull information out of. 

They kind of know this. They give you, for the may NPCs present, a little thing like “Dame Judy Dench” to run an NPC with. Of course then they also give you “Miranda Cimber, the party’s sorceress and the scion of a moderately powerful noble family in the north. She became an adventurer after fleeing her homeland to avoid an arranged marriage. Although she rarely wears it, Miranda is known to carry a brooch inlaid with her family crest, a swan on a rose background.” All of this is trivia and none of it is useful. You do not find her brooch. It’s just trivia, not gameable. And while we don’t need to go 100% in this direction, and I’m not even certain I know where the line is, I do know that when the preponderance is trivia then there’s a problem. This detracts from comprehension. This isn’t a game world you’re building. You’re building something for me to run at the table. EVERYTHING must be seen in that context. 

Take this: “This is the communal space where the cultists gather to eat and socialize. The well is just a normal well with a short retaining wall, a roof above the shaft, and a few buckets attached to ropes for use in drawing up water. There are typically 2d4 cultists loafing and gossipping here.” Little of this is usable. Instead, describe the 2d4 cultists that are loafing and gossiping. Frank is staying down, his tentacle robes hiked up to his knee, mouthing off Subaltern Keltern because he was caught eating after 6pm. Some shit like that.  Show, don’t tell. And don’t give us the room purpose, tec. SHOW it to us. 

Yeah, I could go on and on and on. It’s not the worse thing ever written. It’s not a rip off product. It’s just not a particularly good implementation of something to be run at the table. There is little evocative text, very little showing, and a lot of padding and such. It’s not oriented toward the type of play that is to be expected: a stealth before the alarm hack. Nice try QAGS. AT least I’ve still got from ramed QAGS character sheet from ORIGINS.

This is $15 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. There should always be a preview that shows you some of the relevant text so you can make an intelligent purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/454648/The-Blasphemous-Temple-of-Yargolith?1892600

By Vance Atkins
Leicester's Rambles
OSR
Level: Various?

Welcome to Goldrun’s Grotto, a cave complex out in the wild lands. The complex was originally developed in honor of Zaliel, an out-of-favor minor god of woodlands and rain, with an open-air grotto filled with trees and a hidden shrine in the caverns. Over the years, the complex has been claimed and reclaimed by numerous occupants.

This ten page adventure presents five different interpretations of the same ten room cave map. It would have been FAR better to have done one, well.Cause these are minimal junk.

Five versions of keying the same cave map. “Various Levels” says the intro, but none of the dungeons give any guidance on that. They all starts with a five entry rumour table and then move on the dungeon keys, ten of them, that generally fit about seven or eight to a page. The titles are all “the one with the snail” and “the one with a lot of skeletons”, so, enjoy that. And, to be clear, this isn’t five versions of the same map throughout time. There’s no How To Build A Dungeon thing here. It’s just five different keys for the same map. An evolution, through time, could have been interesting, either as a standalone or as a time travel adventure. There have been a couple of those so far, but none, if I recall correctly, that really stood out. Instead we just get five half-hearted attempts at a dungeon.

None of these dungeons are going to be very interesting. While the room entries DO tend to have something interesting in them, the writing is just not solid enough to hold up a nten ine room dungeon. “A pair of giant crayfish lurk” or “Warning glyphs are etched in to the cavern wall, indicating poison” are the general extent of the room descriptions. This is nowhere near the degree of evocative writing I’m looking for in an adventure. There’s no indication of the room, or passage, and what it FEELS like. There are, here and there, things that are a little more interesting. “Lantern Pool: The chimney of Bretha’s Lamp (Area #5) lies in the muddy bottom of the pool, faintly glowing. If a character enters the pool without holding the body of the lantern, the water solidifies to a glass-like consistency, “freezing” the person in place.” The imagery of a pool of water with a faint glow in the bottom is relatively nice, and a classic. The interactivity here, freezing someone in place, is interesting as well, and its handled, mechanically, just with what you see and a note indicating that dispel magic will work. But, no, “A beehive sits at the south end of the grotto. The bees have absorbed some beneficial energies from the old shrine and its trees” is what we can expect, time and again from this. I note, also, the effort at explaining what is going on in the room, in the beehive example. This is not uncommon in this adventure, and totally unneeded.

There are other minor things. The entrance is noted as area two, when its actually area one. The pools of water are described as being between knee deep and waist deep … a decent difference, and it’s handled by one sentence at the start instead of noting it in each room. The lack of that detail, or not caring about it, harkens back to those very minimal, if nonexistent, room descriptions and lack of interest in providing an environment to adventure in. A mighty sin.

One dungeon, putting all of ones effort in to it, would have worked out better. As if, this is just another novelty product.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. The preview is six pages. You get to see the first two dungeons (!), so, good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/455013/Five-Visits-to-Goldruns-Grotto?1892600

By Christopher Wilson
Self Published
OSE
Levels 3-5

A nobleman from Glaustshine, Duke Bartholomew, has taken up residence in a local hunting manor.  The manor seems to have been renovated nearly overnight and farmers in the area report that the duke seems to enjoy hunting at night, as they can hear the howling of his dogs at the edge of the Solvanus Forest late in the evening.

This 78 page adventure features a manor with three levels and about thirty rooms. It’s a social adventure, maybe? Except it’s not, it’s just a hack? Some delightful farm encounters can’t save a hack adventure, literally and figuratively, with bad descriptions.

Somehow, the party gets mixed up in this adventure. I don’t know how. You’re supposed to get an invitation to dinner at the manor when you are wandering through the woods. WHY you’re wandering through the woods near town is never expanded upon. I guess there’s a rumor table that might, eventually, lead you to go poking around in farmers fields and the like? Anyway, absolutely no hook, just somehow end up wandering in the woods so you can get an invite to dinner by the guards. (There are, by the way, about a zillion normal human “veteran” guards. Holdovers from the imperial army. I guess they follow orders well and don’t question things. It’s always amazed me WHY these dudes do what they do. The seemingly mindless and never-ending number of low level mercenaries that do their masters bidding. A paychecks a paycheck, I guess, but, I’d love to see them as a faction … the big bad cant be TOOOO obviously bad, they need to maintain a pretext, and the muscle is much more easily bribed,  in my fantasy world, I guess.) 

Once you get in I think that this is supposed to be a social adventure. Interact with the duke, his wife, their friend, and so on. Maybe while exploring the manor? And there’s a ball with elf dignitaries the next night after you stay the first night. So, I guess you’re supposed to just explore things? There are no real guidelines on how people react, when the gig is up, how they react to shit and so on. Like I said, I think this WANTS to be a social adventure but it’s not. It’s keyed and stated like a hack fest. The dukes friend gets a 2.5 page stat block, right in the fucking middle of a room description. Like, seriously, the rest of the room, MENTIONING THE FUCKING GUARDS IN IT, shows up as like a couple of sentences at the end of that stat block. What the fuck man? You want me to follow this at the table? And the entire thing is just keyed like a normal explore adventure. Different adventure types require different keying. And while I’m a big BIG fan of the standard map/room/key format, there are times when it’s not appropriate in its usual form. Like in a social adventure. No factions, the social shit is just mixed in to the room keys willy nilly so you never really know whats going on, no timelines …. It’s really that “social shit mixed in to the room keys” thing that is a major problem here. Putting the dignitary ball in the ballroom stat block, for the next night, is the best example of this.

Wanderers are meh. They are doing something but the encounters are not interesting at all. You see a ghost and it goes away. Nothing to do with the adventure. Yo usee kittens playing. There’s just nothing to the encounter details; they don’t contribute to the adventure. And not everything has to, but, if it’s not a hack encounter then it should do SOMETHING, yes?

The adventure has $12k in treasure. Enjoy trying to level on that. Also, the cover says levels three to five while one of the first sentences says levels three to four. I wouldn’t really care about that, except it’s indicative of the degree of care, or lack thereof, expressed by the designer.

Quarter to half page stat blocks to distract. Padding in the text “The characters may choose to travel through the forest during the day, or perhaps set up a camp to rest.” Descriptions, in OSE style, which miss the point of how descriptions are supposed to work in the OSE style “White gravel (carriage turn around in front of double door entrance). Stone and polished wood beams with white plaster (manor foundation and walls).” That, gentle readers, is not how an OSE description style is supposed to work.

There are a couple of highlight though. They all involve the various farm encounters you can have while traveling around through the wilderness. In one you see a boy and ox killed, disemboweled, in a field. More dead family members are in the small home. Arrayed around it are scarecrows, facing it. And another one has been set up in the living room. Super creepy man! They are “hay golems” of course, but, still, nice! No way, as a player, I’d do anything other than burn them ar first sight, but, I like the encounter! And another with a farmer who lets you stay in his barn overnight … just keep away from his daughter! Who is VERY interested in the party. I love the classics! Another has a family in the midst of being killed by brigands burning their home, while another in a classic Dingo got my baby! Encounter. These are all delightful. Nice situations for the party to find themselves in. The entire adventure needed to be like that.

So, wrong format chose, used in the wrong way. And the duke is a doppelganger assassin, is wife actually a fey hag and their friend a necromancer wight. I mourn for the future where people think this set up makes for a good D&D adventure.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages and tells you nothing but the irrelevant backstory. Shitty preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/422733/The-Noblemans-Manor?1892600

By The Basic Expert
The Basic Expert
OSR
"Mid to High" Levels

The castle is named after the black dragon Ravir the Black who lives there. He has accrued followers who are helping him gain treasure (through violence), in order for him to use the treasure in a draconic ritual to achieve godhood. This is a great adventure for mid to higher-level characters that can be dropped into your campaign anywhere where you have a marsh.

This twenty page dungeon has about sixty rooms on six levels. It’s got a dragon on the last level, and is devoid of the life that makes a good product come alive, instead substituting padding and backstory in the rooms descriptions … when there are some.

So, ruined castle in a marsh. The dragon that lives there extort caravans passing by, enriching himself, blah blah blah, needs the cash to become a god. Vaguely Hoard of Tiamaty. He’s collected a following of humanoids that worships him. Which is just a pretext to shove in a bunch of different humanoid types for the party to fight. Lizardmen, orcs, goblins, kobolds, and evil men, among others. But, hey hey, don’t worry, while they don’t get along they put all of their differences aside when it comes to protecting the dragon, so, no faction play. Note how we are now up to two pretexts, before the dungeon even starts, to justify having a monster zoo to just stab and nothing else. No order of battle, just entering rooms and stabbing shit. No NPC play, just entering rooms and stabbing shit. You enjoy that. So much more could have been done if there were factions, or, even if ANY references were made to the cult-like behavior of the people inside. Instead we get “Cleric level 3.” You gotta imagine this shit first. What’s going on? How do people in the real world act? Then, after coming up with some good, solid shit you can go stat it out. Otherwise you just get “Cleric level 3” in a room for you to stab. what fun …

Let’s see, a wanderers table. Yup, they are doing nothing. Orcs, goblins, lizardmen, bandits, gnolls, kobolds, ogres, evil men. Perfectly boring with no flavour to the thing.

Our room descriptions almost always start with “Room 1 – This room is …” or some slight variation. This room appears to be. Sometimes the designer steps it up with “8 goblins are in this room” or some such. That’s why we don’t call things “room 1, instead we say “1 – Makeshift Guardroom” and then go on to describe the room. All of this is bad padding. 

There’s a lot of appears to be and seems to be thrown in.There’s a lot of backstory mixed in to the rooms, sometimes half or a third of a column of information that is completely useless. This isn’t a historical document, it’s a document meant to be used to run a game at the table. Monsters are just mixed in to the text with no formatting, so, good luck pulling out the information you need to run a game. “Generally there are no guards here.” Great, so there are no guards here. Are there generally gods here? Or elephants? “This is the kitchen for the caste (or what is currently being used as a kitchen …” and then describes a kitchen. 

Sometimes the descriptions get REALLY good. Like “An evil level 3 cleric is in this room along with five goblins.” 

Minimal statting, if it weren’t for the padded out backstory and text. There’s nothing to this adventure, beyond what you might get in Palace fo the Vampire Queen. Sure, more words, but to no other effect. Enjoy your land of imagination!

This is $4 at DriveThru, with one five star rating, of course. You’ll get a few pages of rooms in the preview, so, enough to figure things out on your own.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/413187/Castle-Ravir?1892600

By FEI Games
FEI Games
OSE
Levels 6-9

The local Scholar’s Guild has obtained information of a long lost temple of an abandoned god located out in the marshlands. Guildmaster RHorrell has requested your services based on your reputation that is known far and wide. The Guild’s only request is that any artifacts are to be brought back so they can document and study them. They are willing to compensate your success with 5,000gp each as well as equip you with provisions. 

This eleven page digest adventure features a temple with five rooms. It is a one page dungeon without that charm that takes up eleven pages. It reinforced my bewilderment that someone thinks these types of things are products.And the ONLY reason I’m looking at this at all is that is says the entire thing is available in the preview. Since this is a common bitch of mine I thought that maybe FEI Games had improved things. Guess whose boundless optimism was once again crushed underheel … and not by a humble ant?

The intro to this? You read the intro. It’s that little blurb up above. That’s usually the marketing blurb from an adventures DriveThru page, but, when they don’t have one there I try and snag one from the product. That’s the intro blurb from the product. And I have a few things to say about it.

First, there’s absolutely nothing else in the intro to this adventure. After that little column (this is a digest, remember) then room one starts. Nothing more. So that’s ALL you have to go on. That, and, presumably, that cover art? Is that suppose to be the temple in question? We’ll assume so. The thing just launches in to room one. Journey to get there? Is it out in the woods somewhere a day from town? Is it above ground or below ground? There is absolutely no contest to this thing. 

And that intro is one of the most generic on earth. “The local scholars guild” is boring as all fuck. “Abandoned god” is even more boring. Wasn’t their entire volume called Petty Gods?  You couldn’t just pull something from it, or make up a name? You couldn’t do ANYTHING to give this thing some kind of character? Specificity. You need specificity. That’s what brings something to life. Not long winded detail. Specificity. And this is wholly lacking in it except for naming the guildmaster. Not exactly vividly evocative. Or interesting. In any way. 

But, hey, your level nines are gonna get 5k in GP! So, take that fucking cash to bank, right man?! The dungeon, proper, has $10k more in treasure. And you need 100k in XP to gain a level. One person. I am dazzled and amazed by the hubris required to produce something like this.

Did I mention the six hit die shadows? Or the nine hit die crypt keeper? The shadows should be an automatic destroy and the crypt keeper an automatic turn, if memory serves me correctly? Perfect. A perfect design job.

Let’s see here … the art implies the temple is above ground. So, you know, we don’t go through the front door in such cases. We go through the roofs, or tear down the walls. Seems chill to me. Maybe some divination to figure out which room has the loot and then bring out the sledgehammer to knock the back wall to it down? We could use a wizard spell, but, that seems like overkill. Look, I know, but, fuck man, you have to invest SOME effort in design, don’t you? And that clearly was not done here.

Let’s see here. Fiv rooms. Two pages (pffft!) Two riddles, maybe some shadows if you riddle wrong. A crypt thing. A guardian thing and some six HD “strangler vines”. Oooh! Scary scary! Nothing here. Just garbage. One of the riddle is on a bridge crossing a chasm. If you answer correctly you get some magic stones to cross the chasm. The chasm is 10 feet across, sigint diagonal in a room that’s thirty by fifty. Seriously. Ten feet. Maybe, just, step across it?

Room one, titles The Entrance, starts with “This entrance chamber … great, we’re already padding. And then it continues “As your party enters”, so, we’ve got some second person shit going on also. Great. ITS NOT EVEN READ-ALOUD. It’s just there the DM text is formatted like that. Fucking wonderful. How about The Crypt room, eh? Let’s talk a look at that one: “This chamber [more padding!] is filled with ancient sarcophagus. [not specific!]] In the center of the room is a sarcophagus that is partially open. Suddenly a menacing guardian, a Crypt Keeper, rises to protect the temple’s treasures.” That’s all you get for the room. Nothing more. Enjoy that shit. 

You get what you give, that much is true. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $.50. The whole thing is available in the preview. That may be the best part of the adventure. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/454189/Lost-Shrine-Of-Vaelor?1892600