tenfootpole.org

Elderlight Press
Generic/Universal
levels 5-7

The quiet village at the mountain’s base is gripped with fear—protective symbols line every door, and whispers of shadowy figures haunting the forest grow louder. What sinister forces lurk in the mist? What ancient power stirs beyond the veil? Gather your party and ascend into the unknown, where the shadows themselves may not be what they seem…

This eight page “adventure” is just the flimsiest of pretexts to have some dice rolling in … three encounters?. It’s a read-aloud followed by a combat, in outline form. 

There is a giant spectrum of games. You can play Warhammer. You can play one of those indie RPGs in which you explore your own death for some catharsis. Somewhere in the middle is D&D. I’m out camping right now. Just like D&D, camping means something to people. It could mean backpacking in to the woods over a week. It could also mean sleeping in a giant RV in the middle of a parking lot like campground while 600 grandkids run around and you sit around watching Tv outside. Or any of a thousand different variations. Now, someone says to you “Hey, wanna go camping?” Which one can you expect? Alas, it is the same with D&D. The D&D experience I’m looking for is not 4e. It’s not Warhammer. I’d play those if I wanted to play those. I’m not fanficing my character or min-maxing them. I’m a brave little tailor with a glint in my eye and sharp knife up my sleeve in a hole in the ground. I guess you get to play 4e D&D if you want, but I just don’t see the appeal when games do it better.

And thusly this adventure. It’s sitting in the generic/universal category but it is clearly 5e. But it’s the kind of 5et that is 4e. This is just the barest outline of an adventure in order to get to the die rolling. It starts with the Village. Literally the bolded heading ‘Village’ followed by “Dynamic Moment: As the players arrive, they witness a villager hurriedly nailing new protective charms to a door. A scream echoes from another house, abruptly silenced. This adds immediate tension.” You will get no details about that scream. It’s just window dressing. It’s all just window dressing. The first encounter is you travelling to a grover in the woods and getting attacked. I guess you talk to the villagers and they tell you they are scared of the grove and so you go? Anyway, you’re walking to the grove. There’s a short read-aloud ““The trees grow denser, their trunks twisted and blackened as though scorched by an unseen flame. The mist thickens with each step, swallowing sounds and casting strange shapes in the periphery of your vision. Then, the whispers start—faint voices at first, like distant murmurs on the breeze. But soon, the whispers form words: ‘Turn back… your fate awaits.’” And then combat starts as ‘Shadow Creatures’ attack you. What are they? Your guess is as good as mine, all we get is a pretty lengthy stat block with no description or ambiance to their attacks. The next encounter is your skill challenge, as you navigate some cliffs and ledges. Make an Athletics or Acrobatics roll to navigate safely. Last up, another very short read-aloud that says you’ve arrived and then are attacked by the grove’s shadow beast guardians. COMBAT! (In color! Caje is a cajun!) 

If I ignore the half page stat blocks then the text here takes two pages. Which STILL seems excessive for a short read-aloud followed by a combat or skill check. There’s literally nothing more to this. Agnostic my ass.

For the sake of a civilized society you must be allowed to enjoy this gameplay. But, try as I might, I don’t see it. I guess, if that’s what you’re after then this adventure is perfect for you. It’s got a grid map for your minis and You get a little read-aloud before your die rolling starts. So, you found one that fits your style perfectly?

Also, there’s no fucking level range in the marketing/cover/etc. And no fucking loot. 

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages, and the core six pages of text, so you do get to see the entire adventure Good preview. And worth it to see a fine example of this sort of thing.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/517397/the-mistwood-ascent-the-shattered-veil-mini-series?1892600

By Silvio Navaretti, Alberto Iamone, Julien Fenoglio
Forgia Storie
OSE
Levels 3-5

At the end of his long life, the wealthy herbalist Cavillo Spiga required his descendants to tend to the Botanical Cemetery’s garden where he would be buried, under penalty of forfeiting the family’s immense wealth. For decades his heirs have sent a large number of gardeners every month to keep the Botanical Cemetery in perfect order.  But this month no gardeners have returned and the wealth of the Spiga family is in danger! Can you prevent it from falling into the hands of ruthless probate lawyers?

This 54 page adventure details a small cemetery and tomb, with about twenty locations overall. It is meant to be a light heater farce, I think. In the end though it is just wordy for what it is, as a walking tour of a cemetery with a What A Clever Designer Am I vibe.

I don’t like salmon. Or tuna, for that matter. Specifically, I don’t like them in their “steak” forms. Cod or halibut? Sure. But generally I loathe steak fish cuts. The rest of you can enjoy them while I silently judge you. And the same goes for these farce adventures. It’s some kind of tone thing or something. I can’t stand it. It’s not just farce though. I can get behind some farce, and absurdity. It has something to do with the comedic elements. I think they are supposed to be comedic? They aren’t. They are lame. It’s this pastiche. . You’re supposed to think its farce, or supposed to think it’s funny. But it’s neither; it’s just Try Harding.

Ok, so, cemetery with a dude buried in it. He’s relatives got his money as long as they planted a specific garden in the cemetery and kept it well maintained over the years. He’s back to unlife and, in the words of the adventure “The Herbomancer is working on the recipe for the perfect herbal tea”

See! See! Ohhhh boy! Isn’t that great! Guffaw guffaw guffaw. You’re supposed to think it’s funny. I don’t know, maybe you think it is funny. I don’t. I don’t think comedy works well at all in D&D. Sure, you can stick elements, but the suspension of disbelief required means that, at best, I think you can push things to a magical realism type of thing, with brief steps over the line. You know what I have a problem with though? “d. Bee-drawn: Tens of thousands of bees pull the wagon each with its own tiny harness tied to the front of the wagon. It moves 9′ per round.” That’s the werebee queens wagon. No? How about? “All goblins crossing The Botanical Cemetery tie a twig to their head. This silly accessory makes it so the zombie gardeners mistake them for plants, watering them, covering them in manure and shearing their hair. Cunning PCs might imitate the goblins to stay safe from gardeners.” This is, perhaps, as close as I’m willing to go. It is stepping on another trope, of the moronic humanoids, but, also, the party putting sticks on their heads is fun. This is my kind of farce, with a deadly edge to it. Alas, this is few and far between in this adventure, with most of it being the loathsome kind. But, then again, maybe you like that loathsome stuff? What I’m looking for may not be what you’re looking for, in tone.

There’s more than enough for me to not like without droning on about the tone. In the first area of the cemetery you meet some zombie gardeners. If you question them then the DM is instructed to ignore the questions and have the zombies recommend that te party don’t step on the flowerbeds. Again, not my kind of zombies, but, whatever. (In fact, I find the range of zombie vibes in published adventures wild. Mostly just generic undead, sometimes the hordes of flesh eaters, sometimes the horror of the living dead, and sometimes you can talk to them. I guess everyone has their own private Idaho?) 

Oh, also, that first room has the key you’re looking for and you’d have to be an idiot to not find it. You’re told that you hear the zombies hoes striking something metallic. Whatever. This is what counts for the heights of interactivity here. Oh, there’s shit to do. But, again, it’s just a pastiche. There’s no reason to really do anything. Stumble about, grab the key and the other part of it. Maybe talk to a couple of people. Turn some undead (zombies. At levels 3-5?!) Anyway, stumble about and interact with a bunch of ZannAAyYY creatures. Yeah you 

Oh, you get to travel through a body. FLATULENCES • Every 5 rounds: Muscular contractions in the walls create waves of explosive gas that are forcefully expelled toward the exit” That’s right man, never miss an opportunity. 

Oh, the format? Mostly facing pages. Which means two pages per room. Ug! And it’s trying to to the necrotic gnome type formatting. But it doesn’t understand what the purpose of that is or how to use it. Bolding leading to subject headings? Forget that shit, how about just bolding and subject headings not connected to it? The necrotic formatting works because it all works together. You have to understand the why of it to understand how to use it effectively. Otherwise it’s not bringing the clarity that the format is famous for, it’s just, again, putting on a pastiche. It looks like it should be chill but it’s actually worse than if it wasn’t used at all. What if I made a dictionary, and it KIND of looked like it was alphabetical order, but, turns out, it wasn’t? I mean, it DOES still have word definitions, right? It’s just a major pain in the ass to use.

Oh, one encounter has an amphitheater with a bunch of skulls in it, screaming at each other. Are you going to hear this before you get there? Yes, of course! Well, I mean, not in this adventure. Oh, no, no! The map! It’s fucking unnumbered! It’s just a fucking art piece that you get to follow along with because each room has something like “Northwest door: Leads back to

CAVILLO’S TOMB ENTRANCE. • Northeast door: Opens onto VICTOR’S WALKWAY. • Southwest door: Swinging panels. Leads to THE TASTING ROOM.” What the fuck? JUST PUT A FUCKING NUMBER ON THE FUCKING MAP! Why would you not do this? Why would you not put the dictionary in alphabetical order? It takes, what, five seconds? Maybe a minute, total, if I do it REALLY well and legible and number the text also? Also, almost every other adventure on earth does this, so you decided not to it? And, where is the level range?! Not on the fucking cover. Not in the text description on DriveThru. I guess I’m buying this because i just love the publisher and/or designers so much. Fuck that. I’m looking for a level 3-5. 

I loathe this sort of thing. More than the tone. The idea that wandering around and interacting with a bunch of skulls in an amphitheater is fun. I mean, it is. But it’s not interactive play. It doesn’t really lead to anything. It’s just another example of one of those museum tour adventures. In those, you get to wander, look, but touching brings you no reward and only danger. In this, there’s no reason to interact with anything. I guess you need a key part, so you’re fucking around looking for it, but, also, this is like writing a two page description of the mundane flower shop in town, along with the little flower girl that runs it, all so you can pass on a rumor to the party. And you can smell a flower! Roll on the table below … That’s not interactivity. NPC’s get a couple of lines to communicate their vibe and a couple of bullets for what they know, and a couple of sentences for the environment they are on. Much more than that and you’re just Such A Clever Designer. Look, I’m not saying it’s not possible, but I am saying it’s improbable.

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. You get to see the unnumbered map, and a bunch of meaningless text. Nothing of the actual adventure keys, so as to help you make a purchasing decision. Thus, bad preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/517605/the-herbomancer?1892600

By Luiz Eduardo Ricon
Hexplore Publishing
OSR
Levels 3-5

There’s something strange in the neighborhood of Duskenville. Suddenly, not only are people not dying, but all the recent dead started to rise and walk again, seeking to settle their past scores. Hired by a noble knight with a particular dark predicament, the PCs embark on a nightmarish investigation trying to discover why this is happening, while trying to defend the townsfolk from the ghoulish attacks of skeletons, zombies and other insidious undead monstrosities.

This 42 page adventure, inspired by the death art of Hans Holmumblemumblemumble, featur ing ten “place as you will” encounters inspired by the artwork pieces, as well as a small castle with an encounter in it. I don’t know man, how you get 42 pages out of that. There;s nothing here but an outline and some forced art encounters

You know Hans, you love Hans. Iconic artworks. And our designer thinks so also, basing a decent amount of the adventure around the artwork. You’re stopped on the road by this knight who wants your help. No one in the village is dying and the dead have come back to life. He pulls aside his shirt to show a giant hole in his chest. When you go the village everyone says that dudes brother, the knights brother, is an asshat and it must be because of him. In between talking to people you see these little vignettes from the (real world) art pieces. A priest being tormented by a skeleton and so on. You go to the castle to find the brother, to explore it’s empty abstracted locations, only to find him with his normally dead wife, who is very much not dead, but just a little groggy. Oh, also, Death is trapped in this glass globe, all Sandman Episode One style. Free death, kill the dude, adventure over.

This years theme for shitty designs seems to be Abstraction. There’s this mania for not putting any specifics in an adventure. So, hey, I can get behind that. In, like, a one pager. Err, I mean, a good one page dungeon would have specifics, but, like, a one page outline of a much larger adventure? Sure. How about an entire booklet of adventures each of which is one page long, and each of which serves as a seed that can/should be expanded to several nights worth of gaming? That might be an interesting product (that I wouldn’t review.)  But, let’s take that same degree of abstraction and instead make it fill 42 pages? I think not. But, evidently, I’m in the minority because everyone and their brother seems to be writing adventures like this, where they seem terrified to write down anything specific to the adventure at hand.

Each NPC/location in the village has couple of bullet points of information you can learn. Like “The priest is disturbed by a growing number of people unable to pass on, despite last rites.” What the fuck does that mean? Unable to pass on? Disturbed?  Does dude has his head cut off and is still talking to folk? I’d say that would warrant quite a bit more of an emotion than ‘disturbed.’ It’s abstracted, with no specifics. It’s the concept of an idea, putting the heavy lift on the DMs shoulders. When, in fact, the entire point of having a designer attached is to put the heavy lift on the designers shoulders. Otherwise, why is the DM buying the adventure? Let’s not go all ‘spoon feed the DM’ here; as always, we’re looking for enough to be there to inspire the DM, to give them something concrete to riff off of. The ability to do that, time and time again, is what separates a meh adventure from a good one. Or another one at the guardhouse like “An old incident report details Lady Natassya’s death, noting discrepancies in witness testimonies.” Well what the fuck are they? “Locals are scared but refuse to leave, saying “something” won’t let them.” WHAT?!?!?! Something wont let you? Details? Is it a ninety foot tall demon? You are compelled to run back? A curse kills you in five minutes? I’m not cherry picking here. All of the rumors and information are like this. Weirdly abstracted to the point of being meaningless they were included. “Hmmm, why won’t the villagers leave?” says the designer to themselves “Oh, I know, something keeps them from leaving. DONE!” WHAT?! No. Absolutely the fuck not. That’s the fucking color that makes the adventure. I note, also, that the castle in the end is abstracted also, with just some throw away descriptions of nothing. “A door to the west leads to the service wing, also accessible by the door at the top of a granite staircase rising from the courtyard. There’s nothing here except the marks of past revelries and merriments” Sure thing man.

The only specific are the ten little vignettes. Andthese are ridiculously described, in detail. Lets take … The Skeleton Marching Band! Why did an entire marching band get buried in the graveyard, in their uniforms and with their instruments? Fuck it. I love going to zombie walks and am always the scuba diver/golfer/tennis playing zombie. “• The band has 30+ skeletons —too many for a direct assault.” says the adventure. “ But, also, this is a level three to five adventure. I’m pretty sure that’s an auto turn?

Did I mention the bullshit gothic font used so that it’s fuckign impossible to read some headings? I shall save you that rant again, but its absurd I have to keep going on about how people should actually be able to read your adventure. Then there’s just confusing lines thrown i. Ine one vignette a skeleton priest has the real priest captured. A party member must confess a deep sin! “If the PC refuses, the priest suffers 1d4 damage and passes judgment” Which priest? Did I harm the real one by not doing what the skeleton said or did I harm the skeleton one by rejecting its authority? And passes judgement? The living priest passes judgement? I guess, maybe, it must be the skeleton priest? 

Oh, hey, also, you’re soul has been being sucked out the entire time, we learn. “ This is a Soul Syphon, sucking the life force from everyone within 1 mile (except Sir Yannis and his wife, protected by amulets). Every round, it drains 1HP from all within range (Save vs. Spell for half damage)” So half is … a half point? Did anyone read this fucking thing before publishing it? I guess this is more of a “they just started the ritual when you walk in the room” sort of thing? Still, turn undead and all that. Anyway, you’ve got ten rounds to finish him off. No, you don’t know this and it’s not telegraphed. The world just ends sort of thing in ten rounds. Guess you should have gotten your shit together and done some mind reading. Timers only fucking work if the fucking party knows there a timer! They have to be forced to make decisions knowing the consequences. That’s what he fuck tension is. Without that then the DM could just randomly declare at any point, while they are in a tavern “ok, the world ends.” Was it even in danger? 

Abstracted to fuck and back, in virtually every part of this. No real adventure, except for the vignettes, which have no tension thanks to the party cleric. “It’s the old wound sire, skeletons are only effective at levels one and two.” There’s no fucking adventure here. 

This is $8 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/518156/danse-macabre-a-bone-chilling-adventure-for-old-school-rpgs?1892600

By Craig Turner
Aspire2Hope Games
Open00/Darkmaster
Levels 1-4

Jazirat Alburunz is several weeks sailing from the nearest inhabited island chain to the North and over a month’s sailing from the mainland to the East. The island has long been uninhabited, the reason for its desertion unclear, some say a curse; others a disease. Now, only a lone nun tends to a monastery, with two castaways are the only humanoid occupants. Adventurer awaits intrepid explorers from the mysterious peak where a golden light can be seen, to the swamps and jungles.

This fourteen page adventure is a small hex crawl on an island with eight locations. There is little reason to explore because there is painfully little going on. 

You’re at an island for some reason. The captain has pulled in to port. The town is abandoned, not a living soul anywhere. The town hall is STACKED with loot. Overflowing chests, etc. If you take any then a giant bronze statue comes to life and chases/attacks you, all Jason and the Argo style, I guess. Oh, but “The Captain is not keen to take the whole hoard due to the weight and cargo space that it will take up.” Like, what the fuck man? It’s fucking gold, silver, and jewels. Literally the most valuable thing you can carry, I’d guess, in most cases. Unless you’re transporting, I don’t know food or medicine. And even then, I think I can put a LOT of chests on the topdeck or in EVERY crewmembers berth. Oh, and if the party is suspicious of the loot then a remember takes so, so as to wake the statue. You’re dealing with it one way or another. But, still, how about we deal with it AND get a lot of loot out it? Oh, hey, yeah, also, it’s
Up to the GM to determine how much loot there is.” Fuuuuuuck You. This whole Up To The GM thing is such a cop out. 

The rest of the seven encounters? An elf chick nun who does nothing. An obsessive bird watching naturalist, who does nothing. A shipwrecked sailor, who does nothing. A swamp with an ogre in it … with no loot. An abandoned village. And a mine that has a map but is otherwise not detailed except to say that there are four ghosts in it, each with a Black Opal. And, no matter how nice a black opal is, I feel like its not worth more than chests of loot. But, that’s it. There is NOTHING going on here. 

Oh, there is an extensive wandering table, the VAST majority of which is nothing or a normal animal encounter. “You see a bird.” Uh, ok. Sure. Oh, and a weather table. How about “A sudden ten degree temperature drop.” And don’t forget the “sudden ten degree temperature increase.” Of course.  

I don’t even know what more to say. How about that ghost/mine place? The ONLY descriptive text we get is “Give the PCs a warning of the arrival of each ghost – a sighting of its unholy glow or a chill sense if it is round a corner out of sight” Yup, sure. And maybe instead of mundane wanderers a table could have been provided. A table in which the designer did a lot of hard work to craft some REALLY good descriptions and portends of a ghost arriving?

This is, at best, just some ideas for an adventure, I guess. There is very little in the way of relationships between the NPC’s, the only real one existing being the naturalist and the shipwreck survivor, who is no longer welcome y he naturalist because the survivor eats bird eggs. There’s no intrigue. There’s no putting things together. There’s not really anything of note to discover when exploring. The gem mine I guess? In fact, I’d say there;s no reason to go inland beyond the abandoned port. You know, the one with all of the treasure?

What is the point of an adventure like this? An outline, the idea for an outline? I mean, I can roll ona table and come up with this. And if I can do it then anyone can do it. The adventure, as designed, should be something that is constructed. It should be put together by the designer. Things to discover, things to interact with, tightropes to walk, literally and figuratively. We’re looking for situations that the DM can work with. But for a situation to exist then there has to be some potential energy. Some tension to exploit. And there is no tension here. There’s got to be SOMETHING to work with. Something beyond what rolling on a table could provide. You can expand an NPC entry all you want with text,or a room, or a hex, but unless it provides for that tension, that setup and situation, then you’ve done no better than just rolling on a table .

This is $5 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/518133/jazirat-alburunz?1892600

By Todd Lyons
Basic Fantasy Project
Basic Fantasy
Levels 5-8

Four priceless artifacts have been stolen, and the reclusive collectors who owned them have promised to reward anyone who can return their items safely with anything in their power to grant.  The items include Crescent, a golden sickle; Bloodthistle, a crimson morningstar; Soulfang, a silver scimitar; and Tickler, an ebony scythe.  Are you clever and stalwart enough to win this great reward?

This 65 page adventure uses about forty pages to describe about fifty rooms in an infernal punishment prison, with a White Plume “stolen weapons” pretext. We, personally, are in Upper Hell as there is little care here for play without self-indulgence. That means forced encounters, wordiness to an EXTREME in a conversational style, and no real interactivity. But you do get to see punishment vignettes before stabbing. Yeah?

Well, this is certainly from another time. And not a good one. There is some pretext here where four magic weapons have gone missing and you go to this mountain to go find them. I’m not real sure why. I guess you find a note sent by Lareth The Beautiful. Anyway, you go to the dungeon in the mountain only to be immediately sleep gassed (no save) and then find yourself in a some version of Dante’s Inferno, in 52 rooms. Lareth is in room 51 with the last magic weapon in room 52. 

I don’t really know where to begin in hating this. The set up makes no sense. Not that it really has to, but, when you include twenty pages of setup prep then SOMETHING should come from it. The whole “stolen weapons” thing is not covered at all. Who owned them, meeting them, etc. Nothing. Again, not that I’ve overly attached to the hook, but, the designer included it and mentions it over and over and over again. Even telling us what will happen if “the owners” don’t get them back. And we get full page write ups of the weapons, each, for the party to keep them, even though they are not supposed to. But the generic never mentioned people who own the weapons. And then there’s the NPC cleric in town. Or they can be at the farm you pass on the way to the dungeon if you want, we’re told. Like a level seven or something. Who wants a full fucking share but will do no fighting. And claims to have info on the dungeon but that is not followed up on at all. But we do get reams of text of what happens if the cleric dies in the dungeon and all of the ills that will befall the party. Pet NPC maybe/? I don’t know. The whole intro is just fucking weird. It’s long as fuck, twenty pages as I mentioned, and it doesn’t really SAY anything. The amount of gameable content is near zero. Generic town write up, the whole thing. With nothing really noteworthy to warrant the page count. Well, I guess except for the full page weapon write up? Also, you find the first weapon outside the dungeon, wielded by a scarecrow in a field. So, you know … Oh! Oh! No hirelings in town. Except for the Pet NPC. No on ein town will go to the dungeon with you. There’s not one black lotus addict looking for a fix? The whole thing is just designer fiat with little appeal to anything that would make sense. Not that it has to, elves farting out fireballs and all that, but there must be something to illicit a suspension of disbelief. 

Ok, we’re at the dungeon! Room two “Once all are inside the room, any inspections of their bodies or casting of spells will provoke the instantaneous release of a powerful sleeping gas from the demons’ mouths, no save.” And thus the nonsense really begins. You’re dragging in to a reception room and tied to a chair. An imp takes your names. Another dude sees you and gives you a token. It seems you are in an infernal prison and the token lets you cross the boundaries between circles. Err, zones. You will not wander through room after room of nonsense vignettes. In one room you see a hot tub. There’s a sign on the wall that says “the management is not responsible for lost items.” No, that’s not a hint. Maybe it is? There are some rot grubs in the hot tub along with a few coins. Else where is the orgy room, with the succubus, where “The “young and beautiful people” in this room are kept in a state of paralife, so that they may endure a perpetual cycle of forced pleasure and brutal punishment.” So, yeah, we get a lot of backstory in the rooms. And they have these little vignettes in them. One is a hotel lobby where some people look at the art on the wall and others fall from the spiral staircase on the reception desk, over and over again. So, yeah. No, nothing else is going on here. That’s what we get, just these little vignettes. And then someone invariably yells at you and the stabbing starts.

“There is nothing to do in this room except be thankful that you are not one of its prisoners. At the GM’s option, there may be coins or other dropped treasure on the floor” This then, a line from the adventure, is the best description of the thing. There’s a lot of this, the whole “the DM could put something here” going on. I can, in fact, do a lot of things, including doing whatever I want in an adventure and I don’t need to be told that. Especially in a high level adventure.

This sort of conversational style is prevalent throughout the adventure. This is how we get mountains of read-aloud and page long sections of DM text. Asides to the DM, the designer letting us know how clever they are. It’s just one huge morass of text. And, little in the way of actually evocative descriptions of the creatures of the treasure. “Anklet 200gp.” I am dazzled!

And, in the last room is the power behind everything, Lareth, who has not been encountered till now and only mildly hinted at. “I’m angry Lareth hasn’t promoted me in 700 years, here’s a zome passing token.” 

This is like it’s out of late 80’s or 90’s with the amount of text that is coming from it, to no real gameable effect. It’s wild that this would be something coming out in 2025. There is, I guess, no accounting for taste.

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/514756/beneath-the-silver-spire?1892600

By Chris Gonnerman
Basic Fantasy Project
Basic Fantasy
Levels 3-5

Strange, frog-faced humanoids are raiding the Dardenway, the main trade road running south from Essentelle to the Principalities of Kasdeneigh.  They have attacked travelers on the road near the village of Wolvenmere, leaving few survivors to tell the tale.  The King of Essentelle has sent you into the disputed territory to investigate this new threat, and perhaps to end it.  What awaits your party at the strange domed tower on the Rock?

This 69 page adventure presents four game nights/chapters worth of adventure, with three dungeons and a hex crawl. It’s padded out, with little more than stabbing present. I wish I had some kinder things to say but I don’t.

Ok, so, lizard-like humanoids are attacking trade caravans, as hey are wont to do. The local lords can’t do anything cause this is disputed territory, so the merchants guild gets the party involved. They go to the local wizards tower, the titular Rock. He’s a nut now, there’s a rift in the basement, and the place is crawling with the lizard-like humanoids that came through the rift. That’s session one. Quick! Hex crawl to an abbey to get help. That’s session two. Session three is at the abbey, as Hivelings escape from a mirror and go on a rampage, and you discover a scroll that can close the rift. Part four is going BACK to the Rock, fighting more of the rift monsters, and closing the rift. All in a short timeline before an eclipse happens. This was written for a convention where two for hour sessions a day were played across two days. I guess there were four tables playing and some DM’s got this, I hope, more than five minutes before the game started. I hope.

So. Let’s think about your own life. Think about, say, the last ten years. What have you done? Have you grown as a person? Have you learned Spanish? Have you learned some uncomfortable wisdom about life from personal experience? Learned to appreciate something about a different viewpoint? Have you improved your ability to write a dungeon for publication?

Here’s the last review I did by this designer: https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=2434

And, nine years later, this adventure is more of the same. There is extensive read-aloud. I think the opening section is something like one and half pages of it? The boxed text in encounters is full of second person narrative, with “Opening the doors, you see just ten feet of corridor before you,”. It should be obvious why both of these are generally to be avoided. If you read a page and half of text to me then I’m pulling out my phone about a paragraph in and playing Connections. And, no, this is not a generational thing or a respect thing. Wait, maybe it is. You expect people to listen to you drone on and on while you read AT them instead of allowing them to engage in the activity that they sat down for: interactive game play. And as for the second person thing, you don’t know. DId they float through the wall? Wizard eye in? The read-aloud in second person isn’t going to make much sense then, is it? This is much the same as embedding “They Attack!” text in the read-aloud. You don’t know. And, while the DM can adjust the text on the fly, it would also be much simpler, and provide a better experience, if the read-aloud simply described the room instead of describing the programming of the room. It is some misguided attempt to be immersive, I think, but it comes off jarring and less immersive than a good description would.

The DM text is long. VERY long. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen some trap and door porn, but it’s present here. “The mace-armed statue is part of the secret door in the alcove. If the mace is twisted in its grip, the statue and a 5-foot wide section of wall behind it slide forward into the corridor, until the two statues seem to almost be embracing. Characters can then enter area 3a in single file.” Great. Wonderful. 

Oh, oh, did I mention the text padding? “… as what seems to be dust motes swirl around” This is classic appears to be/seem to be. Writing with Style by Ray Vallesse. I don’t agree with everything, but he’s spot on most of the time, and covers this topic well. There is absolutely no fucking excuse to not have glanced at this most basic of writing guidelines. 

There is EXTENSIVE backstory in the DM notes sections of entries. Backstory is only relevant when it is needed to run the game during play and, I believe, is generally better handled in ways other than an exposition dump at the DM. “Daemos followed a ritual (found in the Library, area 17 above) which he believed would make him a powerful lich; in fact, it turned him into a zombraire instead. He has not been undead.”

Backstory is trivia. And this adventure is FULL of trivia. “If anyone looks, the supervisor is wearing a white rope as a belt while the other two have brown ropes; the white ropes are reserved for clerical members of the abbey, while brown ropes signify lay monks (oblates).” Wunderbar. How about “There is a quill knife mixed in with the quills in the basket.” Or, maybe “A chamber pot is beneath the bed, for use when needed. “ Yes, I can see the utility there. “The box has a hinged top, and inside are a number of metal pen nibs (24, if anyone bothers to count, some with dried ink on them) and three wooden pen handles that will accept the nibs” Next up, a detailed account of all the spices in my spice cabinet along with an exact count by weight and number of grains in each … in an adventure in which the spices don’t matter.

(I promise that this will not be a regular thing here) Let’s look at a brief overview of the first chapter/session, from an interactivity standpoint. This would be about 21 rooms over about fourteen pages, not counting the maps and handouts.

• 1: Nothing
• 2: Automatic Shrieker
• 3: They attack!
• 4: They attack!
• 5: You sneeze
• 6: They attack!
• 7: Nothing
• 8: Nothing
• 9: Two groups of monsters fighting. You can help one to earn a reward
• 10: They attack!
• 11: They attack!
• 12: Nothing
• 13: They attack!
• 14: A secret door
• 15: Nothing
• 16: Trick, which has no impact on the adventure except to damage you
• 17: Nothing
• 18: The Big Bad
• 19: They attack!
• 20: You hear whispering
• 21: DImensional rift with something coming through it. 

So, lots of fighting. Two encounters where you could talk a bit. But nothing really to figure out or mess with. These are B2 encounters, expanded to several paragraphs, to no great effect for it. 

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/514750/peril-at-the-rock?1892600

By Aaron Gustwiller
Aaron's Gaming Stuff
S&W
levels 1-2

The tomb was discovered by Aldo, a local shepherd, while he was out searching for a lost sheep. Aldo noticed the tomb’s carved doorway when he was passing a rocky hill and saw the stairs down when he approached the entrance. Though he didn’t know what it was, patrons at the local inn, to whom he told his discovery, reasoned that it could be Sir Edgar’s tomb, the only tomb known to be in the area that was unaccounted for. 

This nine page digest adventure uses about three pages to describe fourteen rooms in a small tomb dungeon. It is minimally described, with little more than stabbing.

What value does a designer add to an adventure? If we just roll on a wandering monster table, and then roll again on a Dungeon Dressings table then that’s not much work for the home DM. This can, and has, been programmed a thousand times and you can find numerous examples right now of websites that will generate a dungeon based on that. So, as a designer can you just take those results and package them up in to a dungeon? I mean, I guess so, sure. But why? There is the explicit goal, I guess, of making money. You could pump one of these out every week and make some amount of money, build a following, run a kickstarter and make more money. I guess rolling on the random tables and having AI pump them out gets you there. But then also there’s the goal to create. To really work on something and be inspired in your creation. To design something that people will love and find enjoyment in. Through your work you help others find some joy in life. A slower, more difficult process, to be sure, but I suspect a much more rewarding one, personally, and I suspect financially. A slow hit is better than a fast miss, as they say.

And thus, this adventure. “Next to a marble basin is a Giant Rat. The basin is full of black, foul smelling water.” This is a room description. We rolled giant rat and basin I guess and then embellished it to marble and put some foul smelling water in it. There’s really nothing to this. Or “Up against the north wall is a chest with [coins] in it.” I guess we rolled a treasure chest on that one. There is nothing to these. There is nothing here. There is no value beyond rolling on a wandering table, and I can do that with a generator in less time then it took to grab this adventure from DriveThru. You’ve got to add value beyond what a random roll produces. This ain’t that. 

You’ll be stabbing here. There is a room with a basin of clear water that will heal you. “There is a shallow marble basin, filled with clear water, in the center of the room.” And then there’s another that you open a compartment in a statue, with a key you find deeper in, for a +1 sword/+3 vs dragons. Well, that’s a nice one for level one anyway. But, beyond the point. There’s no interactivity here. Just walk in and stab something. I’m not gonna go all Three Pillars here, but, again, this is the point of having a designer. Someone to think about the adventure beforehand, make the connections, and communicate them in an effective way that leverages them to more than the sum of their parts. Someone to really do the work to communicate a vibe to the DM, to create something that the players that will intrigue and scare them and give them opportunities of joy. Sure, emergent play, blah blah blah, but, also, you’ve got to have something to work with in the first place. 

Or you can say “There is a stone box up against the east wall it contains [coins].” 

This is free at DriveThru. I think I’m done with Aaron’s Gaming Stuff.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/517053/sir-edgar-s-tomb?1892600

By Andy Castillo
Celestial Skunkworks
OSRIC
Levels 3-7

The party arrives in the City of Genepa, a thriving port and trade town where they explore the city and seek adventure.  Their inquiries lead them to a troll and reptile infested swamp, in search of an elusive group of slavers that are reputed to be lead by a wererat bandit and his wife, The Rat King and The Rat Queen.  Meanwhile, a necromancer is busy, secretly plying his trade in or about the Ratmire District and the Planned Afterlife Cemetery.  As undead start to rampage through sections of the city each night, the council summons the players to investigate the cause of these serious disturbances.  This leads the players down a perilous path of uncovering the Cult of The Rat God!

This 101 page adventure uses about 22 pages to describe the titular adventure of 22 rooms, and includes a couple of other small areas as well as an extensive gazetteer/campaign guide. It is quite wordy, uses second person voice, and eventually just ends up, after all the talk, in simply stabbing things. Whatever the vision, it did not come through.

I don’t know how to get you going here. There are a couple of adventures in this. I’m going to ignore the one with a vampire and thirteen shadows in one room (rated for level four+). Oh, also that one has a level fourteen evil magicuser. But, hey, we’re gonna ignore that one. Instead we’re gonna concentrate on the adventure of the title, the rat god thing. Yes, of course it’s wererats. Duh.

But, first, we must slog through the fifty or so pages of the gazeteer. Land of blah blah blah. City of blah blah blah. We’re here for the adventure; I don’t know how to review a gazeteer. It does seem to be a bit prosaic though, so, not my style at all. Specificity! That’s what I’m after. But, also, not the kind that means a random monster encounter takes three quarters of a page to describe. FOR THE STA BLOCK. That’s just stat blocks. There are, in several places, d8 random tables for wanderers. Those generally take four or so pages to describe, the stat blocks taking up half a page at least. Every once in awhile you get a “Lore” section in a wanderer, which is something like “The traveling wizard’s apprentice will keep to herself and try to travel past the party without drawing much attention. If they engage her, she may offer to trade with the party, providing magical services as allowed by her memorized spells.” Hope your day is going better than mine. I know what a kitchen looks like, after all.

Eventually you stumble upon the keep of the rat men. It intimates over and over again their evil deeds, but there is no lead in. You’re there. They are in league with some bandits, and, of course “The bandits have committed countless terrible atrocities, and do not expect mercy; therefore, they will fight brutally to the death.” Gotcha. IIf it wasn’t clear already, it’s one of THOSE adventures. Inside you will stab things. Over and over again. With little interactivity beyond that. If you encounter a trap it will be a simple one and then you will get attacked immediately by “sentries” waiting in hiding on the other side. They don’t exist, I guess, unless you trigger the trap. 

The descriptions are rather simplistic and overreveal. We get things like this: “This courtyard is 40’long and 30’wide, with a statue of a warrior pointing a two-handed sword towards the ground. A campfire is in front of the statue,where the bandits cook their meals.Wooden doors are spaced evenly along the north and south walls. A couple of these doors appear to have been bashed in, revealing that the area is used by the bandits as a barracks.” And, then, of course, it switches things up to second person ni read-aloud: “When you open the door …” and “You even find a small trail of jewels that lead around the keep to the south side.They could add up.Do you collect them?” Don’t do this. Don’t use second person in your read-alouds. We endeavor to describe something in a neutral way, and, if we include something like that statue then we do something with it, not ignore it. Sure, there can be window dressing. 

And then of course the guards and monsters/bandits. They have a reaction to the intrusion. But their reactions are all included in their individual encounters. So room three and such will say things like their sentries react and run to help the people in room one. Better to put that in room one, yes, where the action is taking place? Or to include a note on the map on reactions? Something that the DM can readily see and use DURING the running of the adventure?

And then there’s the DM advice. There’s a lot of it. “Play on the group’s sense of greed. Tell them they have a vision of themselves in gilded armor or golden finery, surrounded by admiring glances! Encourage them to lunge to their deaths! Try not to laugh until you have sprung the trap” I don’t know who falls for this. Well, I guess I do every time I see something that could be The Hand or The Eye, but, there’s no accounting for taste. And, of course, everyone gets a little backstory in their room, meaningless for actual play but obfuscating the ability to tun the adventure at the table by interfering with the DMs ability to locate the text they need during play.

A mundane stab fest, disorganized, with muddled descriptions. This would have been far better as a stand alone adventure that was really worked on to pump it up. Not that there’s much here to pump up, with most everything just being a stab.

This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages, and shows some of the regional gazetteer as well as those awesome wanderer tables. Poor preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/373071/gma1-cult-of-the-rat-god-osric-1st-edition-rpgs?1892600

By ScarletRevense
Melpomene Gaming
Outcast Silver Raiders

The outcasts encounter an isolated farming community where apocalyptic dogma has evolved into a growing apocalyptic reality. If the outcasts cannot shut down this sect, the danger may creep out into the larger world, perhaps even dooming the Mythic North as a whole.

Wormwood & Gall is a twelve page adventure inside of a 42 page digest zone devoted to Outcast Silver Raiders. It’s try to present this edgy biblical apocalypse thing. Instead it is just coming off as a small series of encounters in which nothing ever really happens. Good luck with your tribulation!

Maybe Outcast is everything I wanted Mork Borg to be? Creativity, but this time cloaked in the aspect of a real adventure? Except, it’s not a very GOOD adventure.

So you show up at his village. Seems a little quiet. Maybe if you ask around and make some rolls and do a good job roleplaying you can find out that the local priest, Ljsdfjgsd, summoned everyone up to old Ahjsgfsdg’s farm. Heading up there to the Ahjsgfsdg’s  place you eventually find some villagers in the middle of an apocalyptic fervor. After a more differenter villager tells you exactly what is going on. You stumble about from place to place, meet someone hiding, and then move on to the next place. 

Or, maybe, in the second hook, you show up in the village/farm because someone told you that a rock fell from the sky in the woods behind Ahjsgfsdg’s farm. ARGGG!!! You know, the adventure is trying to do this whole apocalypse thing, replete with the four horsemen, and then it goes and undercuts the entire thing by telling the party, explicitly, in the hook, that they are going there because of a rock in the woods. Well then, I guess thats what the fuck caused it and where the fuck we should go, right? Look, the rest of this adventure is not great, but, still, you don’t put the fucking twist ending to the suspense movie in the fucking trailer, do you?

And, as I have intimated, the NPC names are off the hook. I am open to being told that these make sense in the context of the designers country (I assume this is up Nordic way, anyway) but fuck man, its going all Forgotten Realms on me. I am NOT going to use your fucked up names. No, it doesn’t have to be Bill and Frank. But you gotta do things to make it easieron the DM rto run the fucking thing.

And, speaking of the fucking NPC’s, they suck. The adventure is supposed to, I think, run as a kind of open ended thing. The party stumbles about, meets some people trying to do something and other people interfere, etc. Except the people here are sooo loosy goosy htat you can’t do that. They don’t really have meaningful goals. I’m not even sure “bring out the tribulation” is a goal of anyone. The vast majority are hiding or cowering in some dark corner. Seriously, at one point I thought “the NPC in this room will be cowering in the corner.” Sure enough, they were. Anyway, they don’t DO anything. The big congregation scene in the barn has a bunch of villagers and a giant virgin mary weeping blood or some shit. That’s it. Yeah, I guess preacher kAksjdfhkdsh could rally them to kill the party. But he’s off elsewhere. Where you meet him. And likely stab him. 

There’s just nothing HAPPENING. Well, besides the cowering. You go someplace and someone or some thing interesting is there, but they are all isolated from each other. The giant blood weeping virgin mary statue in the barn. GREAT!  Nothing to it though. You meet a dude who is smeaty and obviously looks like hes having a heart attack and about to die. GREAT! If you mention him looking like that then he DOES have a heart attack and die. GREAT! These kind of individual elements are all great. Solid anchors to work from. But there is no follow on. He’s nothing but an NPC. The statue does nothing. It’s just all something weird, or someone weird, and nothing more form there,

And, speaking of that hook ruining things … the very first encounter at the room. Roo one. The first thing you are likely to meet … is a chick you tells you EVERYTHING that is going on at the farm. The preacher, ghost, the falling star, images in the mind manifesting. Shes got it all. No discovery for you, Mr Party! No slowly unfolding drama! No rising crescendo to a release.! 

Did I mention it’s digest. In two column format. With a tiny font. And long italics. And, even better, the PDF is spreads only, Jesus, I had this thing zoomed in a bajillionfold just to be able to see the fucking text. And, even better, you don’t NEED spreads! It doesn’t take advantage of that. It’s fucking digital man, make a page version available also.

Decent individual elements here. And I can see where the designer wanted to go with the apocalypse thing, and the villagers, and rivals and so on. But it’s so unsupported as to be goals and wants that mere suggestions of ideas. Those parts, the interactions, needed A LOT more support, perhaps even with a timeline. And some stakes that matter beyond Saving The World. There’s no reason to be here or to give a shit. And even THAT isn’t played up. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. Taint got no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/515517/altar-issue-1-for-outcast-silver-raiders?1892600