The Beacon of Illumvale

Posted on December 13, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Geoff Marchiori
Ludum press
S&W
Levels 1-3

Welcome to The Beacon of Illumvale. The Beacon, as the inhabitants refer to it, is a magnificent magical tower within the town of Illumvale that projects a protective magical light much like a lighthouse. In a way it is a lighthouse of law standing strong against the sea of chaos that surrounds it. Illumvale needs protection as it lies on the perilous western border of the province of Byemon with hordes of chaos minions forever attempting to overrun the town

This 111 page adventure describes a town and uses seventeen pages to describe a dungeon with about fifty rooms. In actuality, an over described town with an under described goblin lair assault. 

Ok, so, this town out in the grasslands wants some new guards. You journey out there to the town and get hired. Then you … do nothing? Seriously … there’s not much here in ways of a hook. It suggests that the party stumble over the nearby cave dungeon. Turns out the evil god Fazouli. Phazoli? Whatever, there’s an evil god/cult getting their foothold on. And, you just stumble over the dungeon.

There’s supposed to be this overland journey element, to get to the town, as well as some encounters in the town. But, they are really just a pretty standard wandering monster table without much detail. “These farmers are native commonfolk. Their farms are dotted all around the town countryside.” Well now, that certainly added a lot to my game night! There’s nothing interesting, or idiosyncratic, or even a situation going on. Just a wanderer attacks. Oh, I guess a dragon does fly overhead. That’s interesting, I guess? It’s all just … the normal D&D shit from the books?

The town has a level sixteen wizard in chard. With a level twelve druid and a level twelve cleric also. In spite of this, I guess they can’t really take care of themselves. Oh, they do have city guard patrols running around, each of which has, like, a level five wizard in them, each with a wand of hold person. Did I mention the potter who is a level two fighter? So, yeah, it’s one of THOSE towns. Anyway, about ninety places in town. Each overly described. There is a little note in some of them in how they can contribute to The War Effort. IE: that cleric can identify an evil shamens unholy symbol as Fazouli. Or, the senior sage can be particularly useful to adventurers, but will need funding support from the council. Interesting little bits, but, also, absolutely scattered throughout the text and in no way easy to follow unless you have memorized the entire thing or taken notes and highlighted shit in the index or something like that. 

So, eventually, you stumble over the caves. There’s about a dozen cave rooms and then it leads to an underground temple complex with about forty rooms. The interactivity here is stabbing things. And I don’t mean Caves of Chaos stabbing things. Oh, no, Bre-ark, tossing a sack of gold and so on that is a wonder of creativity compared to this thing. Just wander in and stab something and go to the next room and repeat it. Truly, we live in the best of times. There is no exploration. I guess, there is a room with yellow mold? And a dwarf prisoner to free? Does that count? I guess?  But this is just a hack. In S&W. In which you shouldn’t really be just hacking. 

Room descriptions are long and boring. Boring adjectives like LARGE and BIG. Over described read-aloud … in a room with guards we’re also told there are four bedrolls and a pile of what you presume to be supplies. Perfect. But my favorite is when DM notes are included in the read-aloud. “The door to this room is very sturdy and is locked (the witch doctor has the only key).” Uh. Ok. Or, “Two burly humanoids jump to their feet as you enter. They each have a sword and shield.” Nothing about the room and presuming that the party was noticed. Perfect. “This is the home of a deadly spider.” Great. Repetition. Almost every single one of the descriptions is like that. And then the DM text drags on for multiple paragraphs overexplaining simple concepts. 

It looks purty. Nice clever, decent art … ai generated it seems, but whatever. And someone spent a lot of time on the town and on the words for the wanderers and overland journey. And an extensive appendices for monsters (which don’t get decent descriptions at all) and magic items and guilds in town and … but it’s all for nothing. Because the heart of the adventure is not interesting. Just take a goblin complex from B2 and add some more rooms and make the descriptions, I don’t know, ten times longer with slightly less interactivity and the B2 goblins?

The adventure, the dungeon, that’s the main thing. That’s what all of teh time and effort should be spent on. Sure, create a town supplement. Or, add a town to the dungeon. But, the fucking dungeon had better be fucking great at that point. Is there a place for a lair assault in D&D? Sure? I guess so? But even a lair assault can be more interesting than a simple hack. Re: G1.

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is eleven pages and show you nothing of the town or the dungeon. Just the meaningless slog of an overland journey.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/458441/The-Beacon-of-Illumvale–13-lvl-module?1892600

EDIT: I got a long letter from the designer with a list of things to correct. I corrected the page count to 111 pages.

Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments

By the Light of the Whispering Flame

Posted on December 11, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Aaron Hedegaard
Self Published
WwN/OSR
Levels 1-3

Welcome to the city of Collant, Jewel of the Serrated Coast, powerhouse of magic and industry. But when the city’s corrupt leaders make a bargain with a sealed demon, cataclysm strikes and the city’s reliance on tainted magic exacts its toll, wrenching it from time and space. Scars in the planar fabric now tether Collant to the shadow realm of Nowhere, and the demon’s return is at hand. But hope is not yet lost. The Order of the Whispering Flame has begun to wield their holy fire to push back the encroaching darkness and cauterize the Scars. To complete their mission, they now seek brave adventurers to bear the flame and press in to the lost depths of the city to finish what was started.

This 68 page digest adventure presents a pointcrawl in a city being dragged to hell. Good descriptions and formatting compliment one of the better (best?) city-imminently-in-hell scenarios I’ve seen. The interactivity is lacking … which may not be an issue for 5e/Pathfinder fans.

Ought oh! Someone made a deal with the devil and now the city of Collant is being dragged to hell all “melt reality in to the plane of hell” style. Some god has come through though and The Whispering Flames light can heal the planar scars. Someone just needs to go find them all, in the city’s eight sectors, taking The Whispering Flame to them to heal them. Guess it’s gonna be you, boyo!

The normal issues, the surface level ones that plague so many, are generally not present here. I’m not going to even try to run an adventure that makes me fight against it. And that issue is not present here. The formatting is clear and easy to read. Cross-references exist when needed. We get a short little description of the area with some folding and then a description oif the exits. I’m not even mad at that, since this is a pointcrawl in a city and sometimes the exit is “you see a tent in the distance.” 

The descriptions are also fairly decent. The very first area is “Mulberry Grove: Shaded grove, crunchy with fallen foliage and fruit. Trees hold clusters of white and pink berries. Reeks of rotting fruit.” That’s a good description. It’s terse and evocative. You get the feel for it instantly. That’s exactly what a room description should do. And, laudable, almost every single room description is about that good. SHADED grover, Fruit REEKING. CRUNCHY ground. It works and works together. Another one, in a silkworm room, reads “Damp, moldy. Steel ducts pump hot, humid air here from the east. Latticed shelves fill the room, bedded with leaves, littered with eggs, crawling with worms.” You get whats going on. So, good descriptions. I’m glossing over both formatting and descriptions for this review.

Interactivity is where things get hairy. There are two basic situations going on. First, there is the demon dude, trapped in The Nowhere/ He wants out. There are clues and things sprinkled about the various points about his true name, what happened, and so on. Then there are eight or so individual city sectors, each with a scar in them that needs to be located and healed and generally has someone there willing to give you access if only you’ll do X for them. There are very very few SITUATIONS beyond those two … and the demon dude is few and far between. The general vibe is that you enter somewhere with some bizarro creature doing something bizarre and you probably end up stabbing it a few times. Sometimes you get to talk, but, generally not in a way that is going to lead to interactivity beyond that. There are things to make friends with, like a mail delivery ghost machine that can deliver a letter to any slot in the city. That could, I suppose, be exploited by the party and IS the kind of open ended shit that I like. It’s also just a little too … random? For me. Most of it seems like window dressing rather than true interactivity. Two possessed spooling machines, full of ennui, painting with ink. Ok. Sure. To what end? And while not everything in an adventure needs to be a situation, there do need to be things going on beyond the main plot points.

Let us assume, for a moment, that the 5e/Pathfinder way of playing D&D has merit. If so then this would be one of the highlights of either system. Seen as series of adventures, they have some definite end points to their quests: a scar in each sector to heal and someone to treat with to make that happen. As a platonic idea of a 5e/Pathfinder adventure I think this would hit the mark, better so than anything I’ve seen for them. (Accepting that Ravenloft tends more to traditional adventure than the 5e/Pathfinder meme of an adventure.) And I don’t mean that as an insult. This feels to me like every 5e/Pathfinder adventure I’ve ever been a player in at a con, except about forty times better than those. 

As an OSR adventure, though, I think the lack of situations and exploration elements in the various rooms does tend to detract quite a bit. I am ABSOLUTELY certain though that many people will be fine with that and, in fact, this may be the perfect example of an adventure path type thing that doesn’t have a fucking railroad in it. 

I do note a few things, beyond the situations, which could be quite a bit better. NPC”s tend to show up in the front of a section. And while they have wants and needs (Great!), sometimes we get short lists of them. “Frank” in bold, with a short description of whats going on with frank. This, I think, needed a little extra work in the formatting department. We need to know, for example, that Frank is a blacksmith and we need to be able to figure that out quickly. That mean bolding or some such, rather than just telling us, in the middle of the paragraph, that Frank is a blacksmith. We’re likely to be looking for one, rather than introducing Frank as a NPC and THEN learning he’s a smith.

Monster descriptions are terrible. Mostly because they don’t exist. While there is great complimentary art in places, the actual descriptions of the nightmares you’re facing just aren’t there. At all. And when they are it feels more like an afterthought. They don’t hit viscerally, which is odd given the strength of the area descriptions. 

I think, however, tha the major issue is with the wandering monster tables. There is a separate one for each area, but they all have the same issue. They don’t feel right. Or at all. Just a sound, or a monster entry like “1d6+2 corrupted hounds.” What you don’t really get here is the aspect of a city being dragged, whole, to hell. You don’t get mobs. You don’t get the street preachers or desperate people or random wacko shit … or even normal people. Ths vibe isn’t really present in the wandering monster tables, or in the actual room descriptions. Sure, things have gone to hell in most places, but that doesn’t come through moment to moment. In totality, it’s still one of the better (and maybe the best) city being dragged to hell adventures. But it also doesn’t really FEEL that way, moment to moment. The priest at the start, who gives you the Whispering Light lantern to heal the scars and charges you with that … he’s not doing it himself because he’s got too much to do. And there are oblique references to refugees. But the vibe of, say, the church in SOylent Green, doesn’t come through. The masses, the desperation, that would actually put the priest in that position rather than, say, saving and entire city. And that same thing happens time and again in each secretary of the city and in each encounter. Sure, they are weird, and smacking of Shit Has Hit The Fan, in some way, but also the chaos just doesn’t come through. And, while there is a timeline and some major events (the adventure probably taking place over weeks, in … ten sessions, at least?) 

I’m not really sure how to rate this one. This is a real adventure. Dude tried hard and succeeded quite a bit. Sure, the chaos doesn’t come through, the fact that the city is on it way to hell. The individual encounter descriptions are good and you can run this easily. And, if you were not looking for, say, and exploratory element that implies interactivity, then this may be one of the best 5e/Pathfinder style adventures. I don’t think, though, that as an OSR adventure the interactivity is going to hold up for me. But, also, I think it will be fine for most. THe look forward to the next one by this dude.

This is $4 at DriveThru. You getting the entire thing in the preview. Page eighteen of the preview/fourteen of the book gives you the first page of actual encounters. That’s a good one to check out for fit.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/441829/By-the-Light-of-the-Whispering-Flame?1892600

Posted in Level 1, No Regerts, Reviews | 4 Comments

The Drowned Valley of Gorth

Posted on December 9, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By R.P. Davis
Kabouter Games
OSR
Level 3?

In a foggy valley high on the knees of The Spine, a ruined castle sleeps half-buried in rancid mud.  A fabulous fortune awaits bold adventurers — if they can survive long enough to keep it!

This 36 page adventure details a dungeon with six rooms in three pages. Of generic garbage. No real design. Abstracted descriptions and much hand waving. And, someone, somewhere, believes this is a good adventure. Astounding.

So, yeah, ruined castle, flooded out when a dam broke, washing away the village, castle, etc. You find some rumors and set off to find it and loot it. The backstory tells us that the castles dungeons were deep. That’s a direct quote. This translates to it having six rooms. Six rooms. Described in three pages. In a 36 page adventure. And it’s got one rating, five stars. I’m sure there’s some kickstarter or something associated with this and/or the publisher. This is, folks, is the way to success. Just cultivate a community. Marketing. Don’t fucking worry about writing something good. You don’t need to do that to make a little cash. 

This piece of shit adventure is full of wisdom. It loves saying things like “We don’t order you to use 6 (or even 1d6) CR 1/4 goblins commanded by a CR 1 hobgoblin. For one thing, that reduces your agency as a GM. For another, it might be deadly for some tables and a pushover for others” Yes, gang, telling us that there are monsters reduces your agency as a DM. I think I’ve fuckign heard everything now. Seriously? You can’t even include a set of fucking monsters? Some fuckwit out there is going to cite some culture war bullshit, but I’m sure this is just a publisher with their head up their ass. Fucking reducing agency. Please. It’s a fucking excuse to not put it in and justify a decision made. Transparent as all fuck. 

In this adventure, after learning about a bunch of rumors about the drowned valley, you are then approached by a wizard, Mael, who wants to hire you to find the place. I can’t stand this shit. WHy can’t the fucking party just go there and loot the fucking place? Why do they have to be hired? It’s not like this is some village fucking farmer without cash that needs all magnificent 7’d. It’s fucking dungeon full of loot. And you want me to go dig out the loot so you can pay me? Excuse me, I’m a middle class wage slave in real life, maybe I don’t have to be one in D&D? Of course, the real reason you are hired is so that you can be betrayed by the wizard at the end of the adventure. You see. Lord Farquad was behind it all after all! And when you come out him and his men attack you to take all fo the loot. That you were hired to go find and given a finders fee for finding. Oh Lareth, your legacy lives on as long as there is a fucking idiot, somewhere, writing nonsense with evil masterminds that just pop out of nowhere for no reason. 

“What gear is available for the adventurers to purchase depends on the urban location in which you set the module’s beginning. In no case will Mael supply the party. Neither will she advance any more coin than she’s already paid them. They’ll need to use their own funds, cunning, and player expertise to equip themselves.” Are you starting to understand, now, how we’re getting to 36 pages in this adventure? It just explained to us that the party could go adventuring if they wanted to and were so inclined. 

Let’s see here … the overland journey is abstracted. Well, if you’re playing OSR it tells you to roll a couple of times. If you’re New School or 5e it just abstracts the journey in to a skill challenge, ala 4e, and say something like “ Each adventurer arrives having already taken damage from accidents, encounters, and environmental effects.” I guess the journey isn’t the destination after all, at least for Kabouter Games. 

Let’s see … the front door to the place is two pages long. That’s longer than most Grimtooth shit, isn’t it? For a simple 600 pound door? Uh huh. Once inside we are met with such dazzling descriptions as “Stone columns march down both sides of the room. Hovering in midair in the center of the room, magically suspended in a beam of brilliant silvery light, is a gilded key of

intricate design.” Ok, so, not exactly terrible. A little sparse, but evocative writing is hard. It doesn’t oover reveal and so on. I’m not mad at it. I’m mad that the actual adventure is only three pages long, but, I’m not mad at the descriptions. 

Great, you made it to room six and found the treasure vault. Money time! “Roll all the dice everyone has. That’s how many gold pieces the adventurers recover from the hoard.” Ok, so, I’m down for the roll every die part. Thats the kind of shit that is going to make the [players giddy. Good gimmick. It’s far, FAR too little treasure though. Maybe multiply by ten, or a hundred, at least. You do know, Kabouter, how XP works in OSR, right? Since you say the adventure is designed for use in the OSR? And you put the logo on your cover? 

At hte end, when youtube out and fight Lareth, you get this tidbit “If combat swings too far against or in favor of the party, Gorth’s dead show up and help you keep things exciting.” So, maybe Kabouter doesn’t exactly know how OSR games work. Or, games in general. Maybethey know how books and Tv work. Bad books and Tv.

There’s more, lots more, like this. This is a six room dungeon with a couple of traps and monsters. Nothing terribly exciting in any way at all. It’s padded the fuck out and full of bad advice. Oh, also, note that there is no drowned valley. Tha’ts abstracted away also. You just get dumped in front of the front door to the place.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. You get to see the “hook”, such that it is, and a little of the overland journey. IE: words telling to you roll randomly. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/457534/The-Drowned-Valley-of-Gorth?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 12 Comments

Hermitage of Yz

Posted on December 6, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By R.P. Davis
Kabouter Games
OSR/ System-Neutral
Level ?

Jovany Strunk, Wise One of Yz, Guardian of the 9 Secrets, is dying. He’s the last living worshiper of the god Yz, and if Jovany goes, Yz goes. That’s why the adventurers are hearing whispers in their dreams, urging them to the Hermitage of Yz.

This nine page cave system uses two pages to describe eight rooms. Eight rooms in which nothing happens. A worthless, boring adventure that lacks even tedium to set it apart. Have fun doing nothing.

Yz is a cosmic star being of unimaginable power. He comes to the campaign world and decides to become a god, with Jovany (who we’ll call Frank from now on) his prophet. Then Frank retires and Yz loses all of his worshipers except him. And he’s about to die. You get some dream shit drawing you his cave. Inside you find that Frank hates Yz and Yz is a little whiny bitch. 

Turns out this isn’t an OSR adventure. It does say OSR on the cover and its in the OSR section on DriveThru, but its actually a system neutral adventure. So, the whinyt ass tree outside the cave that could attack you gets no stats. Nor do the living statues that attack for a couple of rounds. And, you can finish up the adventure by making a Very Hard roll to convince Frank to love Yz again.l I have no idea why people don’t just sta for LabLord or something. If you can turn Very Hard or Tree in to a monster then you should be able to handle an OSR ent as stats to your own system. Whatever.

We see, though, in that above example, a major sin. The purpose of the adventure, the resolution, comes down to a die roll. Make a Very Hard check to convince him to do the thing you want him to do. I’m chill, in some situations, with some rolls for people shit, but, to put the main point on which the adventure rests to a die roll? Seriously? Why not instead, maybe, integrate shit in to the adventure so THAT impacts if he comes back? You know, engage in the play of D&D? Cause rolling fucking dice aint D&D.

I don’t know what to say about this. There is no interactivity. Whiny bitch god begging for you to do something. Frank doesn’t give a shit. Maybe 1.5 combats. Maybe. I would usually note that an adventure that has nothing but combat has no interactivity, which is almost always bad (certain assaults being their own category) but this? Not even straight out combat for SOMETHING to do? 

Marvel in such room descriptions as “This is where worshipers would gather to doff outerwear (like cloaks) and don an amulet before entering a sacred area (such as the Chapel [Area 6]). Characters trained in religion guess this.” I loathe my existence. 

This is what you wanted to do? You wanted to write an adventure where the high priest abandons his god and the god is a whiny bitch about to ‘die’? Sounds good. But a few fucking rooms with no descriptins to speak of with no interactivity? THAT is your idea of an adventure? To be published?! The fucking thing has producers, executive producers, editors, and multiple artists noted. THAT is what you decided to spend your time on? Just fucking do it in a google doc by yourself and spend more time and effort on the actual adventure part of the adventure, maybe. Fucking executive producers. For this. Please.

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages, so, no complaints there. Enjoy the pissy tree.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/460538/Hermitage-of-Yz?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 13 Comments

The Orc Farm

Posted on December 4, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Felbrigg N Napoleon Herriot
Self Published
S&W
Level 1

The PCs are tasked with clearing a farm of the Orc raiders that have taken it over … but the PCs are not the only ones with the same objective. Another party are out to earn the bounty and the Orcs will not be walkover as they have started digging out a dungeon and prepared to repel any heroes.

This thirteen page adventure uses five pages to describe eight cave rooms under an abandoned farm. No descriptions to speak of. Only stabbing. No treasure to speak of. Why these things exist is beyond me.

The cover image is nice. Or, maybe, I like that style? Anyway, there, I said something nice.

There’s this farm. It’s in the woods for some reason? Like, they cleared out some land so there’s this big clearing with farm fields and farmhouse in the middle. I have no idea why. Anyway, orc raiders killed everyone and then didn’t leave. That’s been awhile, but I don’t know how long. Long enough for the fields to be overgrown? Anyway, you’re sent in to clean them out. 

So, you get to go in to the farm. There’s an orc patrol outside so you kill them. Then, the farm. A barn, a pig pen, and a farmhouse with three rooms. This is the extent of the farm description. In an adventure called The Orc Farm. Seriously. Oh, there’s a trapdoor in one room that leads down to the caves under the farmhouse that the orcs discovered and hollowed out. 

There’s this subplot about another group of adventurers also trying to clear the place out and failing. There are two dead bodies next to the road, stripped of gear, and three people hide in the woods watching. That’s ALL you get. I mean, yes, you’re told to make a reaction roll to see how they deal with the party. But that’s it. No other advice on anything related to the rival party. This is, as you can see, par for the course by now with this adventure. A lot of backstory explanation and not much in the way of actionable adventure beyond a minimal Stabbing situation.

The very first read-aloud section of the adventure deals with bodies on the road. “You find two recently deceased human males laid naked beside the path. They were killed by hacking blade attacks, but despite that, they appear at rest. Someone has closed their eyes, crossed their arms across their chest and placed wild flowers in their hands” Quiz time! What’s wrong with that description? Did you answer “over reveal?” The description over reveals what’s going on in the read-aloud. It doesn’t allow for the party to ask follow up questions of the DM. That back and forth, between the players and DM is the main cycle of D&D. And when the read-aloud tells you too much then it leaves no room for a follow up. It indicates a lack of understanding of what D&D is and how it works.

Other descriptions are wonder of evocative writing, such as a main room that says “If the PCs make any noise, or use a light, they will be met here by the orcs from room C.” That’s it. Nothing more. Or “This room has been set aside for a small group of Goblins that are kept as slave workers by the Orcs. The Orcs have been making the Goblins dig out this cavern system. They have no treasure and only some worthless furs to sleep on at the back of the room.” Are you not entertained?! No description to speak of, just a backstory. And this would be similar to most of the rooms in the caves.

Why does something like this exist? There was clearly no playtesting by another DM. There’s little understanding of what D&D is or how it actually plays. It’s a stabbing adventure. Mini-s combat without the grid. This is what fun is?

This is $2 at DriveThru. There is, of course, no preview so you have no chance of seeing what you’re buying before you shell out for it.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/460834/The-Orc-Farm?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 10 Comments

The Chest

Posted on December 2, 2023 by Bryce Lynch

By Aaron Fairbrook
The Merciless Merchants
OSRIC
Levels ?

There is no purpose, no reason, no why, and no suggested character levels as it really depends on how greedy the players want to be. No hooks, no main villains, no huge storyline….Instead of another chest full of glittering treasure for your greedy players; inside are just stairs leading down. In fact, that’s the hook! Stairs descending downwards into the unknown. Are you adventurers brave enough to explore the contents of The Chest?
This sixteen page adventure uses four pages to detail the fourteen rooms in a dungeon that is inside of a treasure chest. The concept remains nice, but it’s more of a treasure than it is a dungeon. Which is fine. But, also, uninteresting as more than a curiosity.
You find a treasure chest. Inside the chest are some stairs going down. Mini level time, for the dungeon! A classic dungeon element, the level within a level, I’ve seen … four? other adventures like this. Which is not to say the concept is bad, but, also, there’s not much new under the sun. And not much new in this. Uninteresting, to put a point on it.
There’s basically one room devoted to each treasure type with some kind of guardian in it. Some copper coin creatures. Liquid silver dudes in a pile of silver coins. Some gold featureless dudes with a gold dragon. A jewel golem. You get it. Along the way we’ve got a gelatinous cube cleaning the place and some large ants running around moving coins to the proper vault. There’s an alien tentacle beast also, drawn to the treasure up your butt (oops, wrong adventure …) It’s there as a pressure valve in case he party abuses their new treasure chest home. You just make a bunch of them invade when the party gets uppity after the adventure is over and they are abusing the place.
There is the usual problem here, with treasure. How to make it a cool place with dreams of avarice, while retaining the level limit shit. “r. Despite the vast amount of gold (walls, floor, ceiling, etc.) covering this room, including the golden liquid of the stream, attempts to chip, collect, and leave with the gold (besides the coins) will disappear if it leaves the room.” So, that’s how you do it. I’m never a fan of this. Maybe just do a 1e thing and give them a level and close to the next one. I did this once at level one, it worked fine.
Interactivity here is … off. A few things to fight. Talk to the dragon. One very obvious and blatant non-subtle riddle. This is not an adventure/magic item t o haunt the players for years to come with riddles, mysteries, and unexplained areas beyond their reach
Descriptions are … straight forward. “14. Bed Chambers ? Simple rooms with small bed, foot locker, small table, chair, and a candle.” This is, herpes, the worst of them. It’s not clear to me why this is even here. Otherwise, in other rooms, an attempt is made. The opening room begins with “The liberation of light from the open chest, reveals the top of two ominous hooded stone statues flanking a claustrophobic 30 foot stairway leading down” SO, I get what is being trie for here. But the liberation of light thing is purple and the actual description, two statues flanking stairs down, is descriptive rather than evocative. And, all of the room descriptions are this more of this workmanlike variety. I understand that evocative writing is hard, but, also, it’s worth it and is what really makes an area come alive. Which benefits both the DM and the players.
Ultimately this is more of a Magic Item With COmplications than it is a dungeon. And, as a dungeon, it is a bit too staid. Mystery and wonder would have gon a long way here. Things to unravel for years to come. And towering descriptions for the players to revel in. Alas, it was not to be.
This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages long. Which means you get to see the entire dungeon. Great preview!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/227772/The-Chest?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 11 Comments

The House of Lost Loves

Posted on November 29, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Thomas Scott Ingle
Self Published
LotFP

The men of Dunnswain are distraught; all their wives are missing! They point apprehensively to a lone house on a hill, a couple miles from town. To paraphrase, “Our wives went there in a tizzy, and ain’t been back since…!” What do these men have in common, aside from their cowardice to investigate the house themselves? Why are only the married women missing? To whom does the house on the hill belong…? A short investigation reveals all…then it’s time to visit… The House of Lost Loves…!

This 84 page adventure explores, I think, the prurient sexual fantasies of the designer, Thomas Scott Ingle, mashed up with HP Lovecraft. Set in a mansion, it provides twelve different scenarios, written as a jumbled mess by a proclaimed edgelord.

Do you like big tittied anime milfs? Well, Thomas Scottt Ingle seems to. This adventure has its text overlaid on background images on … every page? And on every page there’s a topless big tittied anime milf. Ok, not every page. Half the pages? Maybe? Anyway. Lots of H-cup anime milfs adorn the art in this. This goes along with the text of the adventure which is full of women getting stripped, raped, and beaten. Big tittied anime milfs getting striped, huddleing as group while getting raped and whipped. That’s what you get in this adventure. I guess I should back to explain the big-tittied anime milfs Thomas Scott Ingle put in getting stripped, raped, and whipped and how we got there.

Thomas Scott Ingle opens this adventure by spending a page or so telling us what an edgelord he is and how this adventure is not for kids, cause he’s so edgy. Like, seriously, he tells us, not for kids. Great, got it. I forget, that might come before or after the four pages of HP Lovecraft fan fic. Why is HP Lovecraft in this? I have no fucking idea. I guess some weird shit happens and thats what weird shit means to people? HPL? Anyway, a few pages of background/fan fic. 

Ol widow Lovecraft (he got marrieD) lives in the house on the hill. A bunch of women form up a gang and go see her and are never seen again. The husbands (who , it turns out, have all slept with the widow) are afraid for their wives. But, notably, DO NOT form a gang to go deal with things. Their lack of drunken agency is astonishing.

Then we launch in to thirty or so pages of What Could Have Happened. There are twelve of them and each is three or for pages long. Each presents a different version of what is going on inside the house. With names like Wait, What, Who? And Unknown to the Lady of the Home, the titles give you wonderful summaries of what to expect from each. Each says things like “the creature is held in the basement laboratory (b4)” or “the naked raped and beaten female servants are held in the larder, B2.” Good job Thomas Scoot Ingle. With the raping. I mean, why not turn to the most cliched element of all where women are concerned. What about those male servants? Have they, also, not served? Something against a little male anal/oral rape? A  handy by an unwilling footman is out of the question? Let my point here not be lost. If a designer gave a shit about weird and then the duds would be taking it also. I mean, what the fuck does a tentacle care? But that’s not the case in these adventures. And, thusly, I am forced to conclude that something else is going on. Some other reason that Thomas Scott Ingle has written extensively about big-tittied anime milfs getting stripped, raped and beaten. Repeatedly. In a dozen different scenarios, or so. So, you know. Draw what inferences you care to. 

I don’t understand how any reasonable person is supposed to use this. You have five or so pages of “what happened in this variation” and then need to cross-reference that, during play, with the house description that is thirty or so pages deeper in to the adventure. How does that actually work in play? It doesn’t? It’s like a template, the house, was written and then a bunch of variables were formed up and whats missing is the final running of the app to fill in the blanks in the template with the variables. But, rest assured, they are not variables, in the twelve variations presented. It’s just a full of stream of consciousness text telling you what happened, backstory, who is where and kind of what they are doing. And, then, mashed in to all of this is a section in the back that says “Here’s are some traps to use throughout the house is you decide to use traps.” What?!

It’s just free paragraph writing. On full image backgrounds which makes the text very hard to read. Did I mention that one of the variations is a Rick & Morty theme? There’s one creature encounter in the house description, some cannibal parrots. Everything else you have to intuit and reference from the variations. The unnamed house servants, also, I guess? And have I mentioned how the house description conflicts with the variation descriptions of what is going on? Want in the front door? Good luck, that house description, with servants, is only accurate in a few of the variations. Otherwise, look at both at the same time … while holding the entire variation in your head, in order to run the room.

This is a nightmare product. 

This is $12 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. You get the edgelord warning and a page of the HPL fan fic. Shitty preview, showing you nothing of the actual adventure in order to let you make you own determination before purchasing.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/446451/The-House-of-Lost-Loves?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Reviews, The Worst EVAR? | 25 Comments

The Curse of the Ganshoggr

Posted on November 27, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Gus L.
Kill Jester
Errant/OSR
Level 1

The Goose King squats in his great longhouse among verdant fields won by his ancestors. He feasts nightly on the most succulent turf, rich foreign wines, and the finest lettuces. In the swampy dark outside, his kingdom crumbles and suffers. The great gander of the Claymarshes—despoiler, land-devourer, sword-blessed terror bird, maimer of champions, curse of the wrathful stars—has come again. The Ganshoggr’s scream rips the night in contemptuous accusation, sounding the Goose King’s failure — the dawn of an age of ruin.

This fourteen page adventure details a small pointcrawl with a ten room dungeon at the end … which are all sidelines to the main event: a Dragon to kill at level one. The density is high, the language colorful, both to an extent that is almost too much.

There’s a lot to unpack here. First, this is for Errant. It’s some D&D-mine system. Rules light, the marketing blurbs are perfectly written to appeal, they hit every point of interest to make you want to take a look. Until I got to “244 pages.” Uh, no. Seriously, the marketing of this D&D-mine is perfectly designed to appeal to me. Except for the page count. I mean, even Gus wrote this adventure for it, and Gus is one of the few people to get the “Not a Complete Fucking Idiot” Byrce award. But, then, all of the pull quotes are from things that seem suspiciously new school/art punk … which is fine except for that they come with the baggage of never having seen anything ever that they didn’t fawn over. Some dude at work was raving about Applebees. Exceptional, wonderful, etc. I asked him to rate it on a scale of ten and he said a three. Uh huh. Righto, I now dismiss out of hand everything dude says. But, also, Gus wrote something for this and he’s NOT an idiot. 

First things first, this is for a campaign world, not yet published (and, evidently, a LONG way off from being published) in which the world is full of bird people. Not animal people, I dont think, so this isn’t isn’t some furry sex fantasy thing. But, also, that’s fairly idiosyncratic AND if the published game world is a long way off why would you publish this so far in advance? I say that with the full knowledge that I don’t understand business.

So, theres this goose kingdom. A kind of viking/norse setting with longhouses and all that jazz. And there’s this grendel running around now causing problems. The goose offers rewards to anyone who goes out and kills it. So, your level one’s are going out to fight what is essentially a dragon. In the form of a giant goose. 

Yes, thank you, I am fully cognizant of what I am writing. But you gotta hang in there. What we have here is something so very interesting. It’s a very well-realized rendition of that thing I love so much: a folk tale. You’ve got some level one fuckwits and a herculean task. Much in the way of Gone Fishin, but with a darker tone. The dragon in question, errr, giant goose (gander? whatever) is a mythic creature. Wearing nine crows of kings. Removing them weaken him. And, he’ll bargain for them also. The ringing of bells damages him … with the side encounters in the pointcrawl featuring a decent few of them and people who guard them. He leaves his lair to rampage … letting the party sneak in behind him. An honorable dragon, you can surrender and it accepts personal duels. This is Smaug, with a bird telling you where to shoot that black arrow. 

Other parts, here, follow in that same vein. A farmhouse to take respite in, the family inside feeding you and gossiping about the Ganshoggr. The next morning it is a ramshackle mess. The food either being a blessing or curse, depending on what you did. That, alone, is a classic. But, if you confront them that night then throw off their disguises and transform in to three mighty champions … missing the arms and legs that went in to the stew they served you. They boldly announce their names … former knightly champions now but thralls to the Ganshoggr … and loathing it, they work against him how they can. Come one now, that’s so dripping with classicism that not even the star wars fanboys can ignore it. And the adventure does this everywhere. It’s quite strong.

Complimenting this is an indoor/outdoor vibe of the map. There are several areas outside the main dungeon, essentially attached to it. That fit in well, and supplement the mythic nature. This place is DIFFERENT, the vibe tells you. Not ruins, but actual locales, it integrates well in a way that I don’t know I’ve ever seen before.

The interactivity is great, complimenting the folk lore themes by not having everything be combat. People to talk to, trick, and, yes, stab if need be. But brave Little Tailoring the thing will probably work out better for you. 

The writing is great. In the fest hall of the goose king, at the start, we get “While the Goskarls sneer and bluster as a matter of pride, most of the court is amused and delighted to chat with the brave and common fools risking their lives on a mythic Journey”. That sets a mood that any DM should be able to instantly run well. Or, more traditionally, how about “Wide stairs open to a pair of low, candle-lit, stone galleries that reek of curdled wounds and stale sweat. Shuffling figures, their shadows huge on the peeling white plastered walls, crouch at the mouths of various niches” Wide stairs. Low galleries. Candle-lit. Reeking. Figures that SHUFFLE. The use of adjectives and adverbs here is excellent. It really paints the picture that I wish most adventures would. And none of these are isolated examples, it hits over and over and over again, as we’ve all come to expect from Gus.

I think the only way this is really lacking is in the journey to the Ganshoggrs lair. The devastation is a little lacking. I don’t know what I expect to see here. Refugees Destroyed lands? Trees with bodies in them? There are a few encounters on the way, but they tend to not be of this variety; they are mre mythic/folk, like a troll under a bridge. I think perhaps some lead in, to transition from the feast hall to the “lower” mythic encounters may have been in order to set the mood.

Also, the text is getting close to the line of being difficult to use. The formatting is a brief intro with a few words bolded and then some text expanding on those bolded words, with appropriate cross-references in place. I think, though, that the font and size are somehow playing a part in things being a little less straight forward than they might otherwise be. It is dense with baroque vocabulary and phrasings … didn’t I just read something about a FInnegans Wake bookclub finally finishing the book after 22 years? This is some wonderful text:” : Anesthetized by death, the Thralls of the Ganshoggr are the pale remnants of warriors slain by the beast. Six of them are missing their heads, the rest an arm or leg; all have foul, infected wounds”  It’s not over the line, but its getting close. 

I don’t know, I think, for those purists, you can swap out the goose references on the fly and run this like you would anything else. It’s a dragon. And instead of a possibility of a black swan transformation of the villain we get the possibility of a black prince ruling the land. It would be rather trivial.

This is free at DriveThru. You’re a fool not to pick it up.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/455858/The-Curse-of-the-Ganshoggr?1892600

Posted in Reviews, The Best | 21 Comments

Into the Elder Worm

Posted on November 25, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Jeff Simpson
Buddyscott Entertainment Group
B/X
Level 14

The Elder Worm, a purple worm of galactic size, has been released from its cosmic prison and is on the loose! Dare you crawl inside its guts to find out what dreadful creatures make homes in its bones and swim in its stomach? Are you tough enough to journey Into the Elder Worm?

This nineteen page adventure uses four pages to describe 46 rooms inside of a purple room. Yes, the page count/room count is correct. No, it is not anything other than drudgery. Enjoy, fuckwit.

I thought, perhaps, we were done with this sort of thing. But, no. There is still at least one person producing adventures in which you move from room to room and just stab shit. No descriptions to speak of. No interactivity to speak of. Just walk from room to room and stab shit. At level fourteen. In a dungeon that is the inside of a purple worm. I am incredulous. Let us examine this trainwreck.

There’s a REALLY big purple worm running around. You describe to go inside to … look around? See what’s up? Anyway, in through the mouth or butt. Inside you find a bunch of monsters, like fire and frost giants and minotaurs, and then a mind flayer in the brain controlling the thing. Don’t worry, it’s not done with anything of interest.

There are no descriptions here, per se, of the environment you are exploring. The very first room, in the butt, gives you this: “This assembly area is full of troops preparing to move out of the worm to conquer. There are 3 cyclopes, 2 bugbears each handling a basilisk, and 6 minotaurs. They carry no treasure of note and will fight to the death” This is a fairly typical room description. An assembly area. That’s it. Nothing more. Enjoy your worlds of wonder, sucker! And then a list of monsters to fight.That’s fun, right?! Here’s a description of a church, found inside the worm: “This church contains a shrine to Grimbus, God of Worms, Flukes, and Maggots which weeps an icy blue cloud of vapours from pores in the stone.” At least we get icy blue vapours, I guess. So, there’s absolutely no descriptions here, at all. You are a fucking fool to expect some, I guess.

And there is no interactivity. You get to go in to a room and stab something. No one cares about whoever is in the next room. Your only respites from just entering a room and having a DM yell INITIATIVE is the occasional secret door. I guess there is a little city in the intestines, but “the innkeep is a specter” is not exactly what I would interactive. I guess “does not immediately attack” could be see as an interactive encounter? At least in this adventure?

46 rooms in four pages. That’s a pretty decent spread. Too good to be true, as the examples from the text prove. Instead, though, we get fifteen pages that are NOT keys. Fifteen pages of wasted effort. All of the time and effort spend on those fifteen pages SHOULD have gone in to those fucking room keys. THAT’S the adventure here. Why pay attention to all of the other shit, the appendices and explanations and intro and all that bullshit? Why not just put that effort in to the keys? Because you think they are good enough? Here’s a tip for every adventure writer ever: Your keys suck shit. I don’t give a shit who you are. Your keys suck. Put some effort in to them. Yeah, sure, real artists ship. At some point you have to call it done and move on. But until then you should be working on your fucking keys. All of that other shit you’re typing the fuck up? That’s a distraction. Work on your keys some more. Then work on them some more. If you don’t hate the thing you’ve created, yet, and are not disgusted by looking at it another day, then you’re not done yet. I don’t get why people don’t get this. Work on your fucking keys. THAT’S the adventure. And it’s not perfect, yet. 

This adventure, though, is just pure drudgery. ENter room. Have a fight. Next room. I loathe

This is free at DriveThru, and thus, no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/447570/Into-the-Elder-Worm?1892600

Posted in My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Reviews | 47 Comments

The Count, the Castle, & the Curse

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By R.B. Bo
Deficient Games
D20
Levels 1-3

An invitation—by a Count of a name you’ve never heard. From a Castle in a land unknown around these parts. And a Curse which plagues him, pleading for each of your aid—by name—in exchange for an offer too tempting to ignore.   By next morning a horse-drawn carriage awaited each of you. The dark horses stood silent, their black eyes seeing everything and nothing. The sharp-collared driver shifted on his bench, mumbling to himself. You climbed in anyway. The carriage lurched forward the moment you clicked the door shut.

This 42 page adventure is a castle with about 25 rooms; a respun Castle Ravenloft, the original. It’s got good descriptions and an interesting pre-1e take on encounter/interactivity. But, you’ve got to deal with some pretension to run it. And I, the Padishah Emperor of pretension, am also allergic to it.

This adventure is a respun Ravenloft. We’ve got a castle, a fortune teller, a sun sword, mothers icon and tome, beating heart, and dude McDuderson running around having encounters with the party before he big bads them at midnight. It is fairly remarkable in that it has managed to do what we all wish but almost never succeeds: updating something to modern formatting/sensibilities. And I mean that in a positive way. The number of times I’ve typed something like “this needs a heavy edit or rework”, particularly with Dungeon mag, gives way to dreams of doing this. Some have tried, almost always failing miserably. This designer mostly succeeds. It’s like they did a D&D-Mine but left out all (most?) of the shitty new rules ideas that everyone shoves in to theirs. 

The map. We get a side view of the castle with connecting hallways and rooms with page numbers next to them. But, also, I suspect you will never use the map. At the end of each room entry is a little note on room exits, which I usually loathe. It describes the way to the next room. Thus it is kind of point-crawly. But, also, it gives you that “what you hear/see/etc in the next room” thing that a lot of adventures are missing. There’s not keying, or, perhaps rather, the keying is the page number of the room, which is given the in the exit information. It’s manages to take two things I tend to gripe about, the lack of keys and exit information, and turn them around to instead have them provide value in running the adventure. That’s interesting. Mini maps are included, but not really needed. 

The room descriptions here are also quite interesting. The designer has a penchant for those sorts of terse and evocative descriptions that I think both elevate an adventure and make it easier to run. “You wake to sloshing water and clinking chains. Smells of decay & stagnant water. Darkness surrounds you, save for a single candlelight floating between your broken cells.  Dangling feet above water from a single fetter” We’ll allow the use “You” here since it’s the “you wake up” first description form the railroad hook. Another is “A large underground chamber illuminated by wall mounted candles. The air is heavy and thick with dust.” And while I’m never really a fan of the word “large”, or other boring descriptor words, it IS working hard to create a vibe for the room. Which is what a good initial room description should be doing. And, I mentioned before the exit information, like “to the left faint echoes of screams and the sharp crack of bullwhips.” That’s what you want. The interactivity here is also fairly interesting. You do have some fights. And there is a series of encounters with the more memorable people int he castle. Basically, each time you meet them (thanks to the wandering table) they do something more interesting than the last time, thanks to a provided table unique to each one. And yet this is not the interactivity that makes the adventure interesting. It’s got this weird mashup of styles … something like OD&D meets a video game encounter, maybe is a good way to describe it? There’s this non-standard thing about it, but, also, can you see one of these being a really good encounter in, say, an old point and click title. And I mean both of those in a complimentary way. There’s just some weird shit going on in these rooms. There’s a room with a grandfather clock with a skeleton butler dude tinkering with it. If you offer to help he crawls behind the clock and shouts instructions to you … which the player must then repeat verbatim. Or, a baby being born in one room, that if you take it with you rapidly ages to maturity through the adventure. It’s weird shit. And, it generally has some impact on the adventure, not just weird for the sake of being weird. 

If you wanted to run Ravenloft in one four to six hour session then this is the thing for you. It’s a neat respin of it and good positive example of someone accomplishing an update of something older. 

I did mention the pretension, right? This starts with the following hook: “An invitation—by a never heard. From a around these parts. And a plagues him, pleading for each of your aid—by name—in exchange for an offer too tempting to ignore.” What is it? Never mentioned. You start after having been attacked. You’re in the hanging water room I quoted earlier. You have till midnight, then the count shows up to finish you off. So, better find some gear in the rooms and/or escape before then. *yawn* Also, no one kills you in this. If you die, but monster or trap, you get found later, still alive, huddling in a corner. The goal of the monsters/traps are to raise your stress levels for you final encounter with the count. Which WILL happen. You’re told to make sure the party understands that the count WILL be showing up at a set time, in real time. Like, say, you announce he’s showing up in six hours, real time. Uh huh. It’s got this concept of stress. When scary things happen you get more stress. That raises the AC of your enemies and makes saves, etc more difficult. You can lower the stress also. The adventure sprinkles trinkets throughout. When you find one the player gets to describe their relationship to the object from their past life. You find things like Moms Perfume, or your favorite bedtime story. I swear, I’m not making this up. 

But, whatever. Yanking all of that shit out and tossing in some treasure and getting rid of the time limit shit would turn this from its pretension kick to something interesting to run as a D*D adventure. More so than I6, I think. 

It’s Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $0. I’d download it just to see how they managed to pull this off, at that price.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/458350/The-Count-the-Castle–the-Curse?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 8 Comments