A Plague of Rats

Posted on June 8, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By GM Jeremy
TWK Live
OSE
Level 1

In the bustling port city of Vystaanzport, where ships arrive with goods from distant lands, a peculiar disturbance has emerged. Reports speak of rats swarming the docks, threatening the flow of trade and commerce. The city officials, desperate to maintain order, have put out a call for capable individuals to address the vermin infestation. Unbeknownst to the party, this seemingly routine task will be the first thread in a much larger tapestry woven by unseen hands.

This seventeen page adventure presents a seven room dungeon with a four encounters above ground, all related to killing rat swarms. And Giants rats. Ans a rat queen. It is closest in form jotting down notes on a piece of paper, with the expertise of a grade schooler.

It’s single column. There’s no real distinction between when read-aloud starts and when it stops. It just sort of all runs together, and one paragraph break suddenly turns in to DM text again. Not to mention the intro read-aloud text being Looooong, diverting players focus from paying attention. And it’s full of second person narrative, YOU step off the boat. YOU see a so and so. 

This is your first impressions of the adventure. The long read-aloud literally has you stepping off your boat on to the dock and seeing a sign on the tavern door advertising work. Well, after you “sense the urgency in the air.” Dude walks in after you, the harbourmaster, and tells you he’s got a rat problem on the docks and go fix it. This is, all, oh, a page of single column read-aloud to do all of this, all on monologue form. Then the adventure IMMEDIATELY shifts to DM text, with no change in font, or shading, or section heading. This is a portent of things to come. I’m trying not to be too hard on this, since there is a sense of … naivete on the part of the designer. They DID just type up their notes in a single column google doc and slap a nice cover on it. Or that’s how it seems anyway, and there’s something charming about that. But, also, this is not something you want to get mixed up in.

Ok, time to head to to docs! We get a little section that says encounters one through three on the docs is with one rat swarm, two rat swarms, and then two rat swarms. And then we get some read-aloud that is to be used for all three of these encounters. Including a dock worked stumbling backward in surprise. (I’d think I was GroundHog Day’ing if this happened to me in D&D …) There’s not other text here, just a short bit of read-aloud used for all three of the encounters, exactly the same. No DM text. And just that little “Encounter 1 – 1 rat swarm” note before the read aloud. So, yeah. 

You find a chewed sewer grate and go in. And thus starts the seven room sewer adventure. “Descending into the depths of the sewers, a rusty ladder leads down into a dimly lit tunnel. The air is thick with the stench of decay, and the sound of dripping water echoes off the damp walls.” The second sentence isn’t so bad. Maybe a little purple, but it’s heart is in the right place. And the first one is passive, putting the active clause second. Never a good idea. We’re not writing a novel here.  But, then, also, we get descriptions like “At the heart of the sewers lies a foul-smelling cesspit, its depths obscured by darkness and filth.” Maybe too many fantasy novels. Adventure writing is technical writing and has a different set of rules for how to present information. 

Anyway, inside the sewers you will not challenges except fighting rats. Rat swarms. Giants rats. A rat queen. And it looks very much like a 5e conversion, give you fight, like 2 giants rats,  five rats swarms and a rat queen in the final room. Oh, Oh! And you find a journal! It seems like it’s been forever since I’ve seen a crappy crappy journal included in an adventure that explains everything going on. Oh, those were the days … but, also, don’t put that sort of exposition in an adventure it’s better for it to come out through some natural gameplay. 

It’s interesting that this is an OSE adventure, with an OSE-like cover. That would imply the designer has seen a published adventure before writing this one. And, yet, almost everything in this would seem to imply that is NOT the case. The number of very, very basic mistakes here is quite surprising. More coherent than the Bloody Mage, and with no ill intent in their heart … but still not worth checking out, at all, in any way.

This is $1 at DriveThru.The preview is all seventeen pages. So, good on em, mate!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/479601/beneath-the-grey-veil-1-a-plague-of-rats?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 23 Comments

A Traveler’s Guide to the Echelon Forest

Posted on June 5, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By David Lombardo
AwkwardTutrle
Generic/Universal

The Echelon Forest stretches a great distance, making it an awkward obstacle to bypass without crossing through it. Attempts to pave roadways through the woods have always met with failure, sometimes violently, so the crossing is usually reserved for small parties or individuals. It is a strange, isolated place. Alive in more ways than could be usually said for a forest. Within the woods time flows and weather changes at their own pace, and in their own ways. Although largely boreal, It is not restricted to a single clime’s plants and animals. Crossing need not be hazardous, the forest is not malicious, but it is also not entirely safe. Granting the forest its rightful respect is recommended to any who wish to cross quickly and unharmed

This 32 page adventure is not an adventure. An adventure has to have something happen. It is the D&D version of a walking simulator. 

I shall elaborate. I’m not a grumpy old man. I know, I know. But you’re wrong. I have an issue with expectations. I get excited and then am crushed by disappointment. That’s different than being a grumpy old man. My other hobbies tend to be full of old men. And they are grumpy. They hate everything new. They hate that the world has passed them by and that people seem to no longer jump to obey when they open their mouths and have dared to have other opinions. I think the kiddos are great. Life, and change, are a delight. I am, though, somewhat mystified at times. I get, for example, that some people don’t want to play a game and would rather have an experience instead. Engage in an activity, so to speak. It’s not for me and I will be happy to tell you a hundred reasons why I think it sucks shit, but I understand that they can exist and people can like it. And then it gets pushed to the logical extreme and I just am completely lost. I can no longer understand any appeal at all. “We’re all gonna sit here and stare at the blank wall, quietly and awake, for eight hours.” Uh. Ok. And thus we come to today’s adventure: a walking simulator. 

This is a generator for a forest adventure. You do a die drop to create the paths and then roll on some tables to determine which of the points in the booklet to populate where, with the  middle of the forest all being the Heart Tree. I’m going to ignore the die drop portion of this, since it’s just used to determine the map. After that you use the points in the booklet to populate the map. And this is the only reason I’m reviewing this, because there were points. It was not advertised as a generator but rather a way to organize the points provided. 

The first signs of trouble were in the introductory pages. “There are no combat encounters here, and no explicit challenges or puzzles. Just the forest, the strange things within, and the changing weather.” Yup. The designer just told us that there is no content in this adventure. And that checks out. A pair of eagles make their nest in the crook of a large tree. A bearcave,, 50% it’s empty. A lean-to, a simple structure constructed of local materials. Signs of a campfire inside but otherwise uninhabited. Those are three of the points you could encounter. And I’m not really cherry picking nor am I giving a summary of the encounter. Those ARE the descriptions of the encounters. That’s it. That’s all you get. There’s nothing else. No generator for whats there or anything like that. Oh, no, you get a generator for the season and the weather. Hot dry and full of life, says the summer generator. Great. 

As the designer told us, there are no challenges here. Or even any encounters, I would assert. Just an idea for something. No real descriptions. No evocative writing. No interactivity OF .ANY. KIND. Nothing. 

What, then, is an adventure? “an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity.” says the arch-heretic of joy, Websters. Unusual? Maybe? Exciting? That’s not this adventure. Is a walking simulator a game? It shares a medium with games. But, without challenge, is it? (WHich, I note, is the same question often asked of the story game people.)

There is no game here. Not even close. There are no challenges, explicitly. There is no evocative writing or anything to bring the unusual to life. There is barely the unusual, or, rather, barely the outline of the unusual. 

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

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/480881/a-traveler-s-guide-to-the-echelon-forest?1892600

Largshire

I also checked out Largshire. This is a village supplement with seventeen locations in about 31 pages. It is massively overwritten, although there is an attempt to include a plot element in each locales as well as a secret. It just came off a boring though. Your village supplement is in another castle, Mario.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/451450/largshire?1892600

Posted in My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Reviews | 2 Comments

Faces of Clay

Posted on June 3, 2024 by Bryce Lynch

By James S. Austin
Tacitus Publishing
OSE
Level 9

After a house fire tragically took the lives of a young family, their farm found itself left to the devices of the pasture’s fae inhabitants, a band of ruddy brownies. The capricious creatures quickly deduced that absent their human counterparts, the morning deliveries of cream would cease. After a heartfelt moment of loss, they realized that the cow penned in the barn afforded the answer to their problem. Making a new home in the barn’s hayloft, the brownies settled in and learned to utilize the farm’s clay golem. The creature now handles the manual chores and keeps out intruders while they enjoy their sudden good fortune, rubbing their swollen bellies.


This seventeen page adventure has one encounter. A new record in shovelware, I do believe! Yesirree! Seventeen pages! And one whole encounter in that! We’re lucky, I guess, it’s not forty.


There’s an abandoned farmhouse. It’s got a barn. There’s a paragraph of read-aloud that describes the farmhouse, and nothing more. There’s nothing that describes the fame, as a whole. There is, though, separate read-aloud for if you’re looking at the east or west side of the barn. So here’s that. I guess. I mean, it’s not really all that different and contributes nothing to the game. So.


What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to review? You fight one clay golem and, like, eight brownies. Maybe. If you don’t roleplay it out. That’s it. You go in to the barn and see a bunch of clay masks hanging from the ceiling. That’s a nice touch. And if you fight the brownies they could, at some point, let loose some chickens to run around at your feet. Yeah! That’s it.


You can roleplay your way out of this, making friends with the brownies. The golem only gets involved if you fight the brownies. Otherwise, you just listen to a WHOLE lots of read-aloud text, in italics of course.


I’m not fucking around here. There’s nothing in this. A level nine adventure with a clay golem. That’s it. “The first and second-floor ceilings are ribbed with arches to handle the heavier snowfalls during winter.” Woooa! The height of play, that little bit of description! TO keep the winter snowfall off the roof! I mean, it’s not winter, so.


I don’t know what to say here. The barn, outside and in, has over a page of read-aloud. None of which is very pertinent to the encounter. None of which is very evocative. The DM text tells us, like eight different times, that the brownies made/make the clay masks. What do you do here? How do you review this? “It sure does have a lots of skill checks to role play with those brownies!” You walk in, look at a mask scene, the brownies fuck with you, and maybe fight and maybe talk to them. That’s, what, two sentences in another adventure? Maybe three? What am I supposed to review? Every word written? “Well, I don’t know, maybe use the subjunctive clause here …”


One encounter. One. Maybe. Seventeen pages. The effort here is astounding. Theoden, King, what is man to do with such cruel fate? Courage Merry! Courage for our friends!


This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/481752/faces-of-clay-ose?1892600

Belvedere’s Books of Unusual Encounters

I also checked this out. It has 300 little encounter ideas. Each is about a paragraph long, so about two or three per page. The unusual part holds true. One of them has a religious procession chanting and ringing bells, with a ten year old boy being carried around who never ages. He’s a doppelganger who fund a good gig. Or the village where everyone ends every sentence with “Long live Duke Fluxion, long may his kind and benevolent rule guide and protect us all!” No sir, nothing unusual there. Slightly absurdist, or in some cases heightened reality, but not really over the top. I liked it enough to save it as a resource for my game.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/344388/belvedere-s-book-of-unusual-encounters?1892600

Posted in My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Reviews | 13 Comments

The Curse of the Swamp

Posted on June 1, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
1st Adventures
1e
Levels 3-5

At the heart of the swamp lies the accursed tower, housing the dark artifact. Adventurers brave enough to journey into this cursed domain must confront the unholy alliance between the Sea Hag, the Wight, and the artifact itself. Their mission is to fight the encroaching darkness, unravel the artifact’s secrets, and free the land from its malevolent fate.

This thirty page adventure purports to be 1e, but is clearly solidly in the 5e era. Purple prose, long read-aloud, and a very combat oriented adventure without the horror one would like to see. Mechanistic, without the glee of D&D.

I like the artwork for the hag in the swamp on the cover. Very evocative!

And now, on to the problems!

It’s obvious that this is, at a minimum, using the 5e templates. And it’s loaded with skill checks. I’m not saying it’s a conversion, but, certainly, it’s borrowing heavily from 5e mechanics. And how much can you borrow before you are a 1e adventure in name only?

We’ve got hooks! Presented on a random table. *sigh* and none of them are anything to look at. The standard please help me stuff, very abstract, in about one sentence. Which is too bad. The core setup with an undead elf noble in a ruined tower in the swamp and a hag running around the swamp corrupting things and luring in people to feed the evil in the tower. Which, I think, leads to a good hook. If she’s got a radius then the next eclipse, or something, could widen that for a bit, threatening the town/village/whatever. I like that “tied to the land” thing better and it plays off off the two roles the two main baddies are supposed to have. I say supposed to, because the hag is hanging out in the tower also. Bleach! Another missed opportunity. 

Let’s see here, the synopsis says that the baddies will be “capturing the group of adventurers and throwing them into a nightmarish world of unimaginable dangers.” Well great. It’s one of THOSE adventures. And, I think I can imagine a great deal. 

The purple prose is not going to get much better. At one point a chick “turns towards you, revealing a countenance of beauty and an intense gaze that seems to transcend time.” Meh. This goes hand in hand with some DM advice that goes something like “The ambush is flawlessly executed, leaving the characters trapped and overwhelmed by the sheer force of the monsters. There is no chance of escape, and the adventurers will be captured and taken to The Lair of the Sea Hag, where they will confront the next stage of their perilous journey.”  Perilous text, am I right?! ?! WHyis no one laughing? Oh well. 

Also, that lair of the hag is a small hut in the swamp with no hag in it. You’re tied up with no gear. *sigh* I don’t even know what the point of this is. The opening scene is the ambush, on a coast road, where overwhelming forces capture you and stick you there for you to escape. It’s clearly fucking plot. And not the good plot, but the bad kind of play. No bueno.

Lots of read aloud here. Lots. Lengthy. WIth such phrases as “As you venture in to the atrium …” and “Suddenly, in the distance, you hear the desperate cry of a woman in distress!” I hate this shit. I want the woman crying distress, not the fucking read-aloud TELLING me she is crying in distress. At another point we’re told someone is undead. At another point the read-aloud tells us that the Wight lifts the mask to its face. Or that he lists a black skull mask to his face, a cursed artifact that emanates a palpable malevolence. Nope. Absolutely not. You’re telling people things. You want to SHOW people things.We want them to feel it, visceral. Not be told it.

Oh, and there’s several zombie encounters. At levels 3-5. Go figure. Five is an auto turn? And three is, what, a five or six? 

Nothing to see. Move along, move along. 

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. Enjoy them hooks and that overwhelming ambush where they capture the party … for no reason.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/457631/the-curse-of-the-swamp-1e?1892600

Tanners Crossing

I also checked out Tanners Crossing, in an attempt to get my Wishlist down to zero. It has fifty bland places in a small village, that are described in a boring conversational style that is padded out, as well as a table or random travelers “Frank is looking for a wife”, thieves, wagon contents, and boring rumors. This was not the village supplement of my hopes and dreams.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/385494/tanner-s-crossing?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 10 Comments

The Slithering River

Posted on May 29, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
Sebastian Grabne
Dawnfist Games
Generic/Universal

The adventure takes place in the Viper Vale Delta where a tribe of lizardmen have stolen the sacred Singing Stone from Lushwater Village. Villagers fear the wrath of the river god and urges anyone to recover the stone. Meanwhile, the lizardmen are fighting for their lives against a family of giant toads. How will the characters solve the issues along the Slithering River?

This eighteen page adventure presents a small temple with twelve rooms. Pedestrian but not offensive, I’m bored to tears by it. “Of course it was Bryce; it’s a generic/universal adventure!” Well fuck you Mr Hot Shot sane and stable reader … I thought this one was different. 

The lizardmen steal the Singing Stone from the village. The villagers want their stone back. It turns out that the lizardmen are using it to protect themselves from some giant frogs that have just moved in. (I guess lizardmen are pussies now.) They live in a ruined temple in the jungle. Some chick in town offers to guide you there. But, first, the giant albino croc in the swamps is sick and you need to help it. Or, another dude in the tavern wants you to kill it. Oh, and the towns mill has a ghost in it; Mayor Useless would like you to do something about that.

In this review I am going to do nothing but bitch about this adventure. 

The three miniquests included, with the croc and the mill, are perfunctory. You get one column of bullet points for each that outlines the adventure. For the mill, this amounts to the banshee inside asking the party to bring her the dude in town that jilted her in to suicide and then she kills him when they do and she goes away. And the mayor is ok with this. There are, I think, like six bullets that describe this, with no real detail of an adventure at all. I would hesitate to even call this an outline, more of just an idea. No real depth, or anything approaching that at all. Is the dude a bad person, a good person, there’s a complication? Nothing like that. The croc thing provides a boon if you save the croc; then the treehugger who hired you guides you through the swamp and you could avoid a random encounter or so on the way to the lizardman temple. But that’s really it; there’s no real information to run an adventure in either of the mini’s.

The adventure has its heart in the right place, in general, but falls down in most respects when it gets to the specifics. We note, for example, that the handful of NPC’s are being written in a rather terse format. Our treehugging tracker, for example is described as a happy go lucky tracker who knows the jungle well, with a quirk that there is life in everything, even rocks. Great quirk. And the happy go lucky part also. Perhaps not quite as effective as the “three keywords” descriptions that i revel in, but you can see that the designer kind of knows what to do here, even if they are fumbling a bit.

And the descriptions are trying also. “A stilted village that straddles the Slithering River, its halves connected by a swaying bridge. A symphony of bird calls and rushing water fills the air, while wood smoke fills the nostrils” That’s not a bad start. But, also, that’s ALL there is. There’s nothing really to solidify this village over any of the others. (Callback to that kilted lover, perhaps?) There’s an offhand mention of mosquitoes in the swamp, but that’s it. This is a far cry from the kind of evocative setting that really gives the DM something to work with as they ad-lib in things. 

And, once you reach the temple, we get descriptions that are things like “A large hall with exist in all directions” which both uses a boring word, large, and tells us what the map already tells us. Or “The room appears to be an old storage room.” Again, not really great. Appears to be is just padding and we should e working towards a description in which the players think “ah, an old storage room!” rather than outright telling them this. Another room has graffiti on the wall that says “I’ve solved it! You need different blood in each goblet!” Good job putting a clue elsewhere in the dungeon, but a little too on the nose. 

And it has fallen in to the trap of bullet point mania. ALL of the descriptions come in the form of bullet points. When everything is one thing then nothing stands point, if you get my meaning. Bullet points accentuate information, but shouldn’t really be the primary form of communication. Otherwise, how, again, do you know what to focus on?

The adventure is not as bad as most generical/universals, but that’s a long way from good. While the designer is on the right track in many areas, it still comes off as an effort with a lot problems.

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You can see the village, NPC’s, and mini-adventures that I spoke of. A page showing a couple of room keys would have been nice as well.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/477597/the-slithering-river?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments

Jungle Tomb of the Mummy Bride

Posted on May 27, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Levi Combs
Planet X Games
5e
Levels 5-7

Tales of the cursed pyramid and the sleeping tomb of the Mummy Bride have long been a traveler’s tale, passed along by wayward explorers and greedy plunderers alike. Deep within the verdant jungles of the south, amidst a Green Hell of impenetrable jungle, savage cannibals and ancient myth, lies the shattered remnants of a once-powerful civilization and the terrible gods who ruled over them. Rumors swirl of untold riches and un-plundered magic for those brave (or foolish!) enough to claim it. Will your players survive… and what will be left of them?

This 87 page adventure presents a three level jungle temple dungeon with about thirty rooms in about nineteen pages. Full of fun tropes, and leaning hard toward combat and looooong encounters.

To understand this adventure you need to understand Cannibalvision. This is the vibe, presented in a page description up front, of B movie exploitation tropes. Perhaps most readily accessible by that opening scene in the first Indiana Jones. The temple. The natives. The snake in the cockpit. “Nudity that would make a 1980’s National Geographic blush”, we are told. Or “When describing the jungle and its “lost in time” inhabitants, remember that everything in this ancient world is bigger than it should be and that goes double for the freakiness factor. Mosquitoes the size of a puppy or ridiculous swarms of giant leeches should be the norm.” There are some hits and misses in this advice. I get the vibe that the designer is trying for though, and it comes through pretty well, in total. You just have to overlook the hamfisted account of the quaint natives. And you, gentle reader, don’t go pulling your fucking holier than thou shit; you can get a vibe across without resorting to the worst of caricatures. That’s the job of the designer. 

The maps here are a bit simplistic. Just a some simple hallway lines ending in rooms without much complexity. The first level has about two thirds of the rooms with the other two being essentially perfunctory maps or just a couple of numbered encounters. A standard temple layout. Which does tend to be some of the worst dungeon map design. They tend to the simplistic.

The adventure does have some great vignettes though, referencing back to the tropes that we’re all familiar with, and done/written in an evocative manner. At one point you encounter a corpse/mummy. It is mumbling something … but can’t talk because its lips are sewn shut. Cutting them free causes him to continually mutter a slight prayer/saying. That great! It’s great imagery and somewhat scar, giving that push your luck mechanism that should always be a part of a dungeon. And the adventure does this sort of thing over and over again. Even better, there’s some design behind this. Pushing your luck here, by cutting open the mouth to hear the chant, allows you to use the prayer in another room to help bypass the danger there. That is EXACTLY what should happen. Or, in another case, a room full of statues, arms crossed in front of their chests. Triggering them causes their hands to uncover the chests, revealing holes, in which crawling hands flood out. Scarabs anyone? That’s a clear appeal to a trope and some great imagery as well.

And in many other ways the adventure falls down. Wanderers are perfunctory, with such descriptions as this one for a giant spider “ This variety of spider does not spin webs, but is very adept at jumping.” Sure. Bt also there’s no real energy to this, or the others. And while the adventure is magnificent in its specificity in some places, it also engages in the abstraction that frustrating to see “The ancient civilization that once prospered here was not completely eradicated. A savage, cannibalistic tribe of hunters remain nearby, offering up forbidden and bloody tribute to the evil gods within and echoing the decadent, terrible habits of their ancestors.” a tribe. An ancient civilization. Name names man! Give me some bloody tribute! Get in there and revel in it! And you don’t even have to use more words, just different words. The Jaffa hate the Shol’va! And it’s full of minor annoyances, such as presenting us with a step pyramid … without any indication of what you find when you climb the steps (the entrance is at the base.) I can’t imagine the playtest groups never climbed to the top.

But, the main crime here is one of verbosity. The entries are long. Three, or four to a page. A simple spear trap takes four paragraphs to describe. Four! Paragraph after paragraph of words for rooms. And much of it padded out with useless words or phrases or some backstory, and usually all of the above. Rooms APPEAR to be things. “Crouching about, gnawing on split, cracked bones and scuttling around on the floor looking for ragged scraps of flesh are 2d6 ghouls” is a great description of ghoul behaviour. But the description after it is backstory and the one before, of the room proper, full of abstractions and history. It makes it a serious pain to dig through.

I believe this, while for 5e, has its roots in DCC. And it shows. A good DCC adventure thrives on experiences and that is what this has. It’s just a chore to work with and frustrating in its inconsistencies.

This is $12 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. You get to see the first two rooms, which is good, and the abstracted nature of the wanderers and rumours, as well as the Cannibalvision advice.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/259238/jungle-tomb-of-the-mummy-bride?1892600

Posted in 5e, Reviews | 11 Comments

The Grey Citadel

Posted on May 25, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Nathan Douglas Paul
Frog God Games
S&W
Levels 4-5

In the city of Dun Eamon, demons roam the streets, criminals rule the night and an important local power figure has gone missing. Can your heroes unravel the clues that lead through every social element of the city–from the heights of the Grey Citadel to far below its streets and even into the hearts of its inhabitants? Or are some mysteries better left unsolved?

This one hundred page slop of garbage from the Frogs presents a four level dungeon in about forty pages with … sixty(?) rooms, as well as a short investigation, all in an overly described town/city. It’s a wordy wall of text that focuses on combat. 

Ohs Nos! A wizzo is missing! Looks like there’s a succubus hiding in the caves under the city. And a gang of thieves being controlled by her. And a anti-paladin kinda under her control. And a rival adventuring party. And chickula is a succubus so she’s got some simps. 

[I diverge: Looking at the succubus from a more nuanced perspective, there is an opportunity here for something more interesting. Thralls being played as yes men, eager to please, wanting to get laid, etc. I’m sure we’ve all met the type, either online or that dude you knew who is not around anymore cause he’s up some chicks ass. This could be mined for some really good play. It’s not gonna get anywhere near that here, but, it further solidifies my idea of a monster manual based on that kind of description, the themes of the monster and how to represent it. And no culture warring you fuckwits; I’m talking about the dudes without boundaries exhibiting unhealthy behaviors.] 

Have no fear, as soon as you step foot out of your inn you are summoned by the Lord Soliloquy, who gives you a column long read-aloud monologue describing several small things going on in the city and asking you to investigate. You wander around a massively over described city and have some timed events until you find your way in to the sewers, err, I mean caverns under the city. On level four you find Lilith and stab her. It? Whatever. 

I don’t know what to say here. It’s peak Frogs. Long read-aloud. You can drive to detroit and back before the DM finishes the read-alouds. You know all of those morons who bitch about the players being on their phones? It’s of shit like this. I’m not sitting through a fifteen minutes read-aloud. You get a couple of sentences. That’s it. 

Almost a page of text to describe the sawmill. Which has one dirty old man in it. Fuck me man, that’s a shot paragraph at best. And everything in this is like that. You get word after word and sentence after sentence of description about shit. “the corner of the area opposite the entrance are two bodies (an Ebon Union cutpurse who failed to make it back home safely one night, and a beggar who refused to inform for the Ebon Union” That’s one long section in the middle of a HUGLY long description describing a room. And then, of course, we get a detailed description of everything they carried, including the lint in their pockets. Look man, I appreciate some whimsy in shit like this, something to keep the mood a little light or add some mystery. But I don’t need a fucking victorian laundry list of the rotation of the bedlinens. For the last 23 years.

There’s little in the way of actual useful formatting to break up the text and make it usable. There are PAGES full of condensed stat blocks, for S&W, that take up, I don’t know, a fifth of a page for a stat block. In S&W? Uh huh. It’s all in a small font, in that fucked up font they use. It is Wall of text, absolutely it is.

I wonder, did anyone ever try to run this fucking adventure? Anyone at the Frogs I mean. From this booklet. Not the designer, they are too familiar with the adventure. But some rando. Did anyone ever try? Did they tell anyone that this entire thing is useless POS? It’s hard to read, hard to run, and, I think, not the most fulfilling. Unless you like hacks.

Rooms in the dungeon have names like “JUST A FUN GUY” I’m not an asshat. I enjoy some levity also. But, also, you’ve given up any opportunity to bring more context to the rooms you’re describing. To start things off with a framing that will cement everything that follows, leveraging it in to something else Instead, though, we get equipment porn. And tactics porn. Cause that’s all D&D is. Stabbing. Instead of evocative descriptions and interactivity we instead get “You are

free to come up with colorful curses such as “can eat only insects” or “can speak only in single syllables”. You fucking enjoy that. Enjoy the slop being shoveled down your throat without any thought as to what an adventure actually is and how it achieves it.

It seems clear to me that this is a conversion of a Pathfinder adventure. That’s the vibe. I don’t give a fuck how you play D&D. You wanna play Pathfinder, that’s fine. But I give a great many fucks about my basic D&D game. And this shit ain’t it. In any measure of an adventure.

This is $19 at DriveThru. Nineteen fucking dollars. For a PDF. Which might be ok, but its from the Frogs so you know your gonna get ripped off. They got the cover right, at least. The preview is six pages, the first six, showing you just a couple of overview pages. So, not really useful.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/335344/the-grey-citadel-sw?1892600

Posted in Reviews, ribbet, ribbet | 10 Comments

Night Land

Posted on May 22, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Vasili Kaliman
Singing Flame
OSE
Levels 2-3

Night Land is a realm where the sun has extinguished and its ashes lay strewn across a landscape. One after one, the stars in the universe are entering their ultimate stages of life, and existence is evaporating into memory. Night Land may take place far in the future, or even in the past. It is a dream-like realm existing without plot, which referees can weave to their will.

This 48 page digest pointcrawl uses about eighteen pages to describe about seventeen points in a trippy land. It is a pointless endeavor, with no meaning behind it. To it. Just someone with some ability to invent and describe weirdness, but absolutely no understanding of how to use it or what to do with it.

For those of you hoping for some WIlliam Hope Hodgeson, as I was, you shall not find it here. The sun has gone out here, as have most of the stars, and things are a little trippy, but otherwise there is no similarity beyond the name. It is not even to be found in the long list of Inspirations up front. Awake in the Night no more …

Ok, so, you’re awake in the Night Lands. No sun. Just a pale moon (whatever …) and most of the stars have gone out. You’ve been transported there, all Porky in Wakyland with dipping water birds and other weirdness. Then Dungeonmaster shows up to explain to the party what is going on. Errr, sorry, I mean Inspiratus the Gatekeeper, who crawls out of a pit, explains shit, and then jumps in a different pit. Bottomless, presumably. We’re not off to a great start here. And I’m serious about the Porky thing. Watch the toon but turn the sky greenish black.

I sound like an asshat here, but I’m sorely disappointed. With factions like Sunmourners, the Necro Divas and the Void Engineers you’ve got some great imagery just from the names. (Evidently, Mage the Ascension factions/houses make great factions …) The Sunmourners riding around on swine. The Necro DIvas have a ladder to heaven made out of blond human hair. How the fuck yuo make this shit up? Drugs man, lots of drugs. 

The druge continue through to the descriptions. “Within a clearing, an ASH GOLEM sits feasting on LACERATED HUMANS. Geothermal features such as geysers and hot MUD POOLS are nearby. Other ASH GOLEMS are soaking in one of the pools, chanting tender MELODIES to one another. Numerous SUN SPRITES are fluttering above them, enthralled” or “Only Necro Divas can perform magic here. Divine or arcane words spoken by other casters fall to the ground as vapor, hardening in forms reflecting the meaning. These solid forms can be taken out of the hamlet, after which the spell regresses back into an ethereal substance and activates as normal.” That’s some weird ass shit and some weird ass descriptions. Flash of radiant color sparkle within, great bubbles rise to the surface of things. The designer has a penchant for writing a terse little description and coming up with some bizarre ass shit. 

And then not knowing fuck all about what to do with it.

This comes in many different forms. Let us start with the very nature of a pointcrawl. If you try to stray from the path then the DM is told “The ashes might become too thick to wade through; terrifying beasts might be heard ahead to discourage them; they might reach an escarpment too steep to scale” IE: “I didn’t care to figure this out, just hand wave it.” Or, perhaps, the weird ass use of bolding. You can see it up above, in that ash golem description. MELODIES is bolded. Are they monsters? No. Something with more detail below this description? No. And the fucking thing does this all over the place. There’s one more sentence to that description. It ends with “a convergence point for UNEXPLAINED aerial wonders”   I’m pretty certain this refers to the table, taking up the rest of the page, of “Occurrences in the sky.” Since there’s nothing else I guess this is the same as UNEXPLAINED. What, exactly, was the point of this? And I’m not harping on a misused word, this shit happens all over the place.

Not to mention the misuse of randomness. Everything is a fucking table in this. Yeah, it’s great that the wanderers are doing something ala the wonder of Dave Bowman, but beyond that EVERYTHING that can happen is a table. Why? Why make the encounter at a location random? Will you be revisiting that location time and again and need something new to happen? No? Then why? Why not, instead, take one of those fucking ideas and expand on the six words you used to instead to provide a fully formed encounter. I find this so frustrating; the mediocre, or worse, encounters here are sometimes full of good ideas. But they have no room to breathe. And it all stems from this complete lack of understanding of randomness and the role it plays. If you want an encounter then write a fucking encounter. Why fuck around with making the Tome of Adventure Design instead look like Wackyland? Just write a fucking encounter man. Instead we get little fragments, not formed at all. 

But the major sin is the lack of cohesion. This is, I think, best exemplified by the point The Fog. “Nestled within a valley is a region thickly shrouded in BLUE FOG.While most travelers pass through without incident, many go missing each year, VANISHING without a trace. They emerge several days, months, or years later — without aging — and with no sense that time has elapsed.” You get a little table for people emerging from the fog, or for you entering the fog. That’s it. It’s just pomo, weird for the sake of being weird. It lacks any connection to anything. And, I would assert, almost every encounter in this pointcrawl follows in this fashion, even those among the factions. Nothing matters.

THings end with a visit to a garden party out of Alice and The Hatter, with a figure that has blackmail material on several notable figures. None to be found in this adventure. And never to be visited again. Just like the holy travelers who have found a new form of transportation … with no other words than those being written about it. 

There’s nothing here. It’s an empty void with a patina of colour. 

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is a one page DMS page. That’s worse than fucking useless as fucking preview.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/364204/night-land?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 12 Comments

Slyth Hive

Posted on May 20, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By PrinceofNothing
The Merciless Merchants
1e
Levels 14+

What once was, shall be again. The evil Pharnabazus, high priest of Shub-Niggurath, has ventured into Old Agoiah, and with the aid of evil sorcery, has re-awakened an ancient terror. The Slyth, a weapon race of the primordial Axototli civilization, has been reborn from the Wells of Lazarus at the hands of the Arch-Heretic. Reports of missing huntsmen, depopulated forests and sightings of eerie, primeval monstrosities begin to filter in from this decrepit backwater region.

This one hundred page adventure uses about fifty pages to describe a nine level dungeon with an ant/borg/Aliens vibe that is combined with “standard” D&D elements and tropes to produce a decent representation of a high-level AD&D adventure. It’s not a shitty high level adventure, and therefore worth having. Although I can’t imagine more than four groups in the history of D&D being able to play this.

High level adventures are a rare thing, and this makes me somewhat circumspect when reviewing some of the better ones … or ones that I think are better. They tend, I think, to all be puzzles of a strategic sort. The party is working against something. They have a huge amount of resources at their disposal, from spells to magic items to vast quantities of men and  materials they can bring to bear. To some  extent this is mirrored in the lower level game, where hit points and rations and spells and torches work against a wandering table. At a higher level though this can become a sort of strategic game. The story goes that the Tomb of Horrors was solved by a large number of orc minions. And, I’ve always thought that a small army of soldiers with peasant laborers with shovels could dig out many dungeons. Or, the party could flood it and work out the rest later. They are puzzles without a solution, ready for the party to engage in their fuckwittery … and deady traps for those facing them head on.

The arch-heretic Pharnabazus was seen arriving on black ships crewed by evil men and marching in to the wilderness, toward a high mountain, or, as th text tells us “Peasants fear Old Agoiah, the highest mountain of the place, and shudder beneath its brooding presence.” The Well of Lazarus awaits him deep within. (You can see here the appeal to the cultural consciousness to bring mor to the words than the actually written text. Allusions to LoTR, and other pop culture references help bring the correct vibe to the adventure for the players to relish in. I’m always excited to see things like this brining more to the written word than is actually on the page..) And yet this is not the adventure. It is only the pretext and finale, for to get there you must go through the Slyth Hive. He has used the well to awaken an ancient warrior race, held captive by an even ancienter race. Bringing them back, changing himself in the process, to eventually unleash. They are a cross between ants, The Aliens (plural) movie and the borg, adapting to the parties use of effects eventually and evolving to counter them. This is presented as a somewhat serious situation,  but not the end of the world, thankfully, as that trope is quite worn out. A toned down Death Frost Doom ending, if you will. 

The nature of the threat is brought home by the suggested start. Your group of mid-level pregens (Including The Kent, for those in the know) goes in and probably gets this asses kicked almost immediatly. Then the second squad goes in. Solomon the Magician (Human lvl 16 LN Mu) Archmage of Forces, Powers & Dominions. Sir Giselher (Human LG Paladin 14) Undefeated Paragon of Virtue (28 years old) Legendary Underworld figure. Peerless killer of giants, dragons, and men. Grandmaster f the Order of the Radiant Dawn. The Master of Summer. The Great Druid. There are no histories, the titles do everything and communicate everything you need to know about their past. A power trip to be sure, and exactly what this should be bringing.

There are nine levels here, only one of which we might call the typical dungeon map. Great caverns with some tunnels hanging off of them set up some massive set pieces, potentially, with some small exploration after. This appears a couple of times. And then a vertical map completely underwater … a sunken realm of the ancients. Another level or just rooms in solid stone, that the psionic inhabitants travel between … a key level to dealing a serious blow to the Slyth, turning off many of their defenses/gimps. Not just 100 wishes, but a site where you can help turn the tables on the larger scale. 

You’ll also find not just a nest of Aliens here, but also some potential friends. A rebel hive. A major drow patrol. Friendly cactus people. And a major druid that is being forced to do things. This isn’t a one-sided affair. Hard, to be sure, but  not just small combats. A large number of large scale potential combats but not just those. Not just traps of the usual variety, or puzzles to turn to your favor. Not just allies. This is a complex environment written in a more neutral way in which the party can turn things to their advantage if they can figure them out. All supported by some pretty decent writing that helps to bring the environment to life. The focus is on interactivity, both with the encounters and with the descriptions. Not rock star level descriptions, but very solid ones.

The editing can be sloppy at times, with keys and map symbols. This is all able to be worked out but is annoying. As is the use of roman numerals for the map keys. Blah. This is not the comprehension I was looking for. There is a FUCK TON of treasure here, enough, I suspect, to easily level. If you can get it out. That’s a lot of coin to haul out. Especially in a dungeon incursion like this one with hostels all around. The magic items are suitably good at times (a +4 spear, in particular, being exactly what I would expect for an epic item (+4) handled in a good way) and in many other places items of power are just booked. Talisman of Evil. Talisman of the Void. Bleech.) And the number of subsystems to keep track of is non-trivial. You’re going to need some stat sheets for the Slyth, at a minimum, and to have the adaptations thing handy, as well as manage the gimps/defenses/reactions. And that’s before you get to the many and varied abilities of the opposition force. There is a lot going on here and a little more in support of the beleaguered DM, during play, would be appreciated. Essentially EVERYTHING is going on, including psionics and etherealness. As one would expect from high level play.

I suspect that anyone playing this is going to get asses handed to them. There’s more to high level play than the stats on the page. The ability to use your character, outside of the box, is what is going to make a difference here. An experienced PLAYER. At high levels. And, even better, having grown in to their character through play instead of taking over one. I don’t think thats a critique of the adventure, just an observation of high levels and how people fit in to their characters over time. 

There is so much going on here that it is hard to get it all down. Nature attacks. Clones of people, controlled. The Slyth proper. Their fungus cousins. NPC’s good and evil. The underwater vertical level and disconnected rooms level. Psionics. Sunken cities of the ancients. Ancients that FEEL like ancients and their slave/warrior species that feels like one. A  lot going on, with just about everything weird from the books being fit in as well. And it all fits. And fits well. And in an epic manner. But, also, The only thing I’m morally opposed to is the Purple Worm gimp. This thing is truly epic, without having that forced appearance of being epic.

This is $15 at DriveThru. No preview? Tsk Tsk

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/458449/slyth-hive?1892600

Posted in Level 12, Reviews, The Best | 11 Comments

The Valley of Flowers

Posted on May 18, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
Jedediah Berry, Andrew McAlpine
Phantom Mill Games
OSE

Wildendrem! Where quests unfurl like the petals of the blood-red poppy. Where monsters haunt the edges of the world—and the edges of the world draw ever nearer. Aerthur the Hornèd King is gone, but his shining vision lives on, borne by countless knights over a land in the grips of a sorcerous delirium. The sun has gone strange, and the roads are beset by phantoms and brigands. The once united provinces grow ever more isolated, ever more themselves Now the valiant and the foolhardy alike seek glory in regions riddled with sinister enchantments. Oaths sworn, oaths broken, treasures claimed and lost and claimed again— and so the whirligig of the seasons unveils its perilous mysteries. Wildendrem! Your golden age is ended. New adventures unfold in the light of a ragged sun.

This 150 page supplement is a campaign guide, regional supplement, and dungeons combining to form a slightly offbeat mythic environment for gaming. An idiosyncratic vibe with a MONSTROUS number of things going on, and a tone that is magnificent.

The very first table in the book, in the cover, is “What is the sun doing today” that you roll on each morning. “7 Maintaining a low, indecipherable chant.” This sets the tone for all that is come. A tone that is very hard to describe. It’s not like you can compare it to things well, such as “LotR except Sauron won” or something like that. A mashup of the Wizard of Oz, Arthurian myths, the movie Wizards … I don’t know what else? Maybe we start at the Arthurian thing, full on Pendragon mode. But, also, lets push things, in every direction, until we get to a place where knights could maybe joust on giant bees and, while it would be unusual, you also wouldn’t totally freak out. (Also, The bees are quite bureaucratic here, with lots of rules set down by Her Highness, and its likely you might get in trouble at some point.) The church is a little askew. The Faerie court could show up and it would not be all that out of place. The nobility is pushed to foppish excesses. In fact, everything is just pushed a little more. Not hyper-realism, but just a bit beyond that. Maybe the world of Quixote? It’s everything the default LotFP setting is, but, turned on its head and instead of being all evil and hopeless instead the sun is shining and everyone is optimistic. Not really, but let’s go with that as I continue to struggle with communicating the vibe.

“Aerthur is missing, and the sun has gone strange and monstrous. The steward Unther, a hollow suit of armor, makes oracular proclamations, mystifying the old king’s ministers. An intoxicating strangeness ripples over the land as knights of myriad orders, in the grips of  lunatic passions, undertake quests of dubious provenance. Meanwhile, the people of Wildendrem stray from the faith, seeking the forbidden mysteries of old.” That’s not a bad overview. Whimsical … but with a flavour of deadly that leans for to the frequency of the typical D&D world … and occasionally slips in to LotFP territory. Gone Fishin’ would not be out of place here. 

There is a writing and creativity here, creativity aligned with tone, that just fits perfectly. “Dark and musty, unfinished stone walls, creaking iron steps.[]. Roseate light spills through the cracks of the marble door at the bottom.” Now That’s a fucking description. And it’s just a fucking spiral staircase. Some throwaway place. Or, let’s talk about The Prayer Beast, found in the Graveyard of Idols in the Tower of the First Heresy, a place the Holy Church keeps things hidden: “A 10’ tall humanoid that crawls on knees and forearms. It is headless and blind, and covered with dozens of hands and mouths. Its hands make occult gestures while the mouths whisper prayers to different gods; sometimes one will shout an expression of futility and despair (“nothing triumphs over all, no one hears your prayers, we are alone, the sky is empty, empty”). The beast is confused, erratic, and in constant pain” Now that’s a fucking monsters description. It focuses on play, not some ecology bullshit. This is what the party will EXPERIENCE.

We’re getting, maybe, six distinct regions in the land, Each with nine or so different places of note. These are described in a short little paragraph, a couple of sentences, with three keywords for notable NPC’s (which I love, in theory, and wish were a little more thought out, in practice, in places in this) and a little section after that, again just a couple of sentences, for some quest ideas/things to do at this place/people. In addition we’re getting about five dungeons and maybe, of, ten r so other places that are more described than a single entry but less than a full blown dungeon. 

One notable place is an old monk abbey, recently abandoned. The monks having committed a drunken murder and summoned a drunken god … who is evolving in to a five-fold facet of themselves. With some knights present also who have sworn to drink all of thor special liquor known to exist in the land. A site/quest/adventure that could end with The Great Sobering or with The Forever Feast. 

There’s a strong social element to most of what goes on in these locations. It’s not your typical hack dungeon, although there are still things about to stab. I don’t know, a comparison to Castle Amber? That Abbey, for example as three or four pages (digest pages. SIGH) of factions, people, dunkkard rules and so on, before we reach the keys, 21 or so rooms. “ Five umbral imps (p. 32) put the finishing touches on a large, sumptuous meal .” in the kitchen, so, we stabbing or sucking up?

“Cardinals and archmystagogues may usually be recognized by their enormous, swollen head”. Literally, in this case.

A magnificent little regional setting. Strong on vibe, consistent, deadly, whimsical, or, perhaps, farcical? It’s not in any way silly. I would have no problem at all running something here. One of the more decent things since Scourge of the Demon Wolf. (Yes, I know the scope is different)

This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages. It’s a good preview, showing a fine selection of things, focusing on some of the regional locations and few of the more in-depth location pages. And the art matches the vibe perfectly. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/458107/the-valley-of-flowers?1892600

Posted in Reviews, The Best | 4 Comments