tenfootpole.org

By Realm Diver
Self Published
BECMI
Levels 4-6

You opened the chest? You shouldn’t have opened the chest! You are magically transported to a ruined temple surrounded by vast desert. A dragon, driven mad by the slaying of her mate and brood, lies between you and a wish-granting treasure that could mean your salvation, or spell your doom…

This 24 page adventure uses about thirteen pages to describe a dungeon with about 35 rooms. It’s got a rather complex situation going on in it that seems inconsistent with its size and difficulty. I’m not a fan of the long-winded and writing to be slogged though, but, also, there’s something going on here. Just not enough for me to to deal with it.

I’m having a hard time with this one. I think I can tell that there is something going on here, but I’m so off-put by the presentation and writing that I want to throw up a little in my mouth. WHich does seem overly harsh. But, there it is. Anyway, I said there was a lot going on …

We’re going to ignore the premise. You find a treasure chest and open it and find a jewel buried in some sand and if you touch it then the sand swirls around you and you’re all transported to this place in the desert. There’s an abandoned campsite and a mesa with a couple of giant statues standing in front of a crack in the mesa wall. So, right, we’re ignoring that. Yes, treasure chest adventure, living room, blah blah blah, hook. Let’s instead focus on some on the weirdly high number of things going on here for a dungeon with 35 rooms. We’ve got the lizardmen-like tribe in this temple complex. Then we’ve got the EHP lizardman shaman, who is raising humanoids from the dead with her magic staff. We’ve got the former leader of the tribe, under house arrest and looking to regain power, pretty please Mr adventurer. Let’s see, we’ve got a thief raiding the temple. We’ve got the undead former high priest of the temple who really thinks the lesser evil here is getting the party to cleanse the temple of most of those folks. ANOTHER undead dude seems to be full of ennui. The Azure Guard, the undead dudes raised by the EHP, are bopping about. And then there’s the crazy dragon whose mate and hatchlings are dead, in the final room. Azure? Yup. Worshiped by the lizardman dudes? Yup. Stuck in that room? Yup.

While there is  bit of an order of battle for the evil lizardman faction, and the house-arrest queen has some deets, mostly the people with plans are just sitting in their rooms waiting. Including the dragon. This is kind of disappointing. In addition to everyone listed there are also a few other things going here, ghosts to talk to and so on, almost all of which give you some kind of clue as to SOMETHING in the adventure. What’s a little off putting here, though, is the relative size of the adventure. It’s only 35 rooms, and in a typical dungeon room format. And that’s A LOT of intrigue for 35 rooms. The tightness of space isn’t going to allow for a lot of room to sneak about, infiltrate and so on, I think. There IS a secondary entrance to the tomb, that takes you to quite a few of the lizardman people to interact with, so, maybe thats the “correct” way to play? It’s just hard. There are a lot of high HD enemies here and we’re playing BASIC. Like a bunch of 3HD lizardmen riding 5HD firebreathing (3d6) firedrakes. It’s just rough, in such a compressed area. I guess your going to have to really sneak about. 

Up until now, in the review, you might be thinking this is a relatively decent adventure. And it might actually be one. And then I touch on the writing. I hate it. It’s got a format its using and its own style and I fucking hate both of them. It’s probably just me. But I don’t know that I care; it was also my money. We’re going to ignore that the read-aoud is in some fucked up font that you can’t actually read. There’s only, like, two sections of read-aloud in the adventure anyway. Still, I hate it.

I’ve taken another long break. I still hate it and I still don’t really know. The writing style is not particularly evocative, at all. And I don’t think it’s trying to be, at all. I guess, it’s fact based? And I don’t like that? A typical description might read: “This room has a 5’ pit in it to house giant oil beetles the Sandscales farm for their oil and meat. The beetles are fed on whatever dead or rotting matter the Sandscales accumulate, and are quite content to stay in the pit. They will certainly see anything that enters the pit as fair game to eat, however. There is a 40% chance there is a Sandscale male in here on the raised floor, dumping slop into the pit.” That room description isn’t really saying anything. There’s a lot of explaining why things are the way they are, but it’s not really anything other tan a 5’ pit with beetles in it and maybe a lizardman. But it’s long, isn’t it? And that’s pretty typical. A lot of the rooms, most, I’d guess, run to half a column of text. It’s got this bullet point style and I think the first one is usually a general overview of the room with the rest following up on that. But, also, this means a lot of the rooms are four or more paragraphs. And padded out, wordy, verbose, mostly for no reason at all. It if could take a sentence then it takes three. I feel, continually, like I’m fighting the text to get something out of it. “Prison Cells: Whatever these rooms used to be, the Sandscales have repurposed them as a prison” Yup, that’s why the room name is Prison Cells.That first sentence does nothing but repeat that this is a prison. That’s the purpose of the room title, to frame what’s to come. And then you frame it again. I think we all know by now that I’m not looking for an ultra minimal room description, but, also, I fucking HATE the padded out shit. This isn’t an ethnographic exploration of the lizardman takeover of a desert temple. We’re playing fucking D&D tonight and I’m not using a highlighter to do the work that the editor should have done. Oh, wait, no editor. Not that the fucking copyeditor shit that passes for editing would have helped anyway. Man, I AM grumpy this morning. “This room has the appearance of a barracks.” No. Never. It IS a barracks or is not. That goes for the DM text and that goes for players text. You’re just padding the fucking thing out. 

There’s a 9HD undead philosopher in this. He summons four 1 HD blobs to defend himself. “He will not defend himself, but will cackle madly and disappear if destroyed.” A commentary on the futility of modernism since the death of God? I didn’t expect to see that in a BECMI adventure. 

I don’t like this. I accept that there could be an adventure in here. I think it needs a larger map and a reworking of the various areas in to something that might be more supportive of faction play. In terms of design, that’s the flaw here. But, also, this thing needs a complete reworking of the text. There is no evocative writing to cement the room for a DM to effectively riff from. And they are padded out to hell and back, making digging though the text a chore. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages and shows you mostly padding. The last two pages describe the outside of the temple complex and part f the first two rooms. Those last two are what you can expect from the text, especially that last one.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/494473/madness-of-the-azure-queen-becmi?1892600

By Andrea Tupac Mollica
Hellwinter Forge of Wonders
OSE
Levels 4-6

The wizard Azarhorn has hired you to escort him to the Cenotaph of the Forlorn God, where a fabulous treasure awaits you. You heard something about the sinister fame surrounding the place, but the wizard promised you a good reward and all the riches you can plunder: enough to dismiss all doubts and fears. You just arrived at the village of Greyven, nothing more than a bunch of stone houses a few miles away from your final destination. You have the time to supply; then you’ll have to leave for the Cenotaph and the perils awaiting you inside.

This forty page adventure uses about sixteen pages to describe about seventeen rooms in a dungeon/prison. Rooms are one trick challenge rooms, with generic tropes done generically and an uninspiring, but short, writing style. At least there’s that.

First, the good. The rooms descriptions are relatively terse. There is a decent amount of DM text for each room, but, also, for something like this I think it could be considered terse. We’re no longer in the days of just noting pit traps on the map, so a short paragraph about one seems to be the standard.  And, the paragraphs are focused on the effects of the rooms in a kind of bullet point style, once major thing per point, so, it doesn’t seem like the text, either DM text or room read aloud, is too burdensome. This, alone, means that I don’t hate this adventure. Also, the adventure starts with you passing through a little village and there’s a body hanging from a gallows in the middle of the village square. Groovy! That’s a fun bit of description! It’s got some game effect, cutting off it’s pinkies to use to open doors per some folklore, bt, still, it’s a nice touch anyway. That’s exactly the kind of thing you might put in to set the mood for a disaster to follow or some such. There’s one more nice little bit, and it’s in the village also. The villagers have a rumor/legend about The Hill Horror that wander the hills. That’s what they call it, The Hill Horror. That’s the way legends and rumors work! Name the thing. The troll under the bridge should be Ol Man Hickory. The bandits should be Fat Mamma Cass’ Boys. I love it! Oh, one more bit of finery in this adventure: at one point in the wilderness the party gets a better die roll if they have a ranger “or a stray dog is with them.” That’s some OSR D&D playing right there! Got a dog? It’s gonna help you out. A free-wheeling kind of play, in which mechanics are not tied, via the books, to every little thing but circumstances make a difference. Make the case why you don’t need to roll the dice! Get a dog. Have a DM that thinks about what is going on rather than just looking up rules!

Which is not at all to say that I think this is a good adventure. It is, at most, an adventure that does not offend too much. I did find myself giving withering sigh after withering sigh, Sideshow Bob style.

First, we’ve got an escort mission. You’re escorting Mr Wizzo in to the dungeon. How fun. Then, of course, Mr Wizzo doesn’t help you at all during the adventure. What fun. “He considers it a test to see if he chose the right people to escort him in to the dungeon.” What fun. And then in the last room of the dungeon he turns on you to kill you. What fun. Never say that one coming. You know why adventurers don’t have families and loved ones? Because the shitty DM trauma is real. Anyway, go ahead, take your time, explore the dungeon. But …”After one month, all the Forlorn God dungeon’s perils reset, and all the creatures revive with full HP” What fun. I just can’t fucking stand of that shit. Why are we even playing D&D? It’s all fucking bad. It takes the agency out of the players hands. Just watch a fucking movie or roll one die as a party and have the DM narrate what happens for the next four hours. loathe Loathe LOATHE.

The map is an uninteresting affair, with no real thought behind it. The read-aloud can be column length in some places, and terse in others. But t also is in an annoying fucking font that is hard to read. It’s beyond me why people still do this. DId no one tell you this? That, as the DM, it was hard to read the fucking font? No? Because you didn’t give it to someone to run? 

And the room descriptions. Ug. Some of them are short and terse. “NARROW AND UNEVEN STEPS DESCEND INTO THE DARK BELLY OF THE HILL, FROM WHICH A FETID AND STALE AIR EXUDES.” I’m down for some fetid and stale air exuding from the dungeon. But when we also get shit like “THIS COLD ROOM IS BARE EXCEPT FOR THE REALISTIC STATUES OF six war mastiffs. AN UNKNOWN HAND PORTRAYED THE BEASTS IN VARIOUS POSITIONS.” An unknown hand? Really? It’s all in that weird narrator style, or stage direction style, maybe. “A ghostly figure COVERED IN A RAGGED BLACK ROBE SITS IN FRONT OF A TABLE WITH eleven mouse skulls. WITH A BOOMING, EERIE VOICE, THE FIGURE INTRODUCES ITSELF  AS THE Skullmaster AND INVITES THE CHARACTERS TO CHALLENGE IT TO A GAME OF INTELLIGENCE AND STRATEGY” What the fuck is that about? Abstracted? Generalized? I have no words to even describe that writing style and its blunder. 

Interactivity is simplistic. Basically, in each room you face a challenge. Maybe a pit trap or something. And you have to collect all of the keys and use them to open various doors, etc. In most rooms you have to be quiet or The Jailer shows up. It’s not clear to me how he gets from level one of the dungeon to level two, since the entrance is under a lake you have to drain. But, anyway, he shows up if you’re not quiet. We get “challenges” like “, the doors magically close, and all the lights, including the magical ones, snuff out” and then the ink demon attacks. Of course. Fucking doors slamming and your lights going out. Lame lame lame lame lame lame lame lame lame lame lame lame lame  lame lame lame  lame lame lame  lame lame lame  lame lame lame  lame lame lame  lame lame lame  lame lame lame  lame lame lame  lame lame lame  lame lame lame  lame lame lame  lame lame lame  lame lame lame  lame lame lame. Backstory that doesn’t make a difference in the adventure. The Jailer was the former blah blah blah” but, of course, doesn’t mean anything since he can’t remember anything and even if he did it wouldn’t impact the adventure you’re on. 

Uninteresting rooms. Generic tropes done generically. Plot points worthy of the worst 5e dreck. That all detracts from the better parts of the adventure, which are few and far between. And yet I don’t hate this. At least the rooms are short. I’d drink myself to oblivious if I had to run this, but I could run it.

This is $3 at DriveThru. There’s no real preview. There is a sample of one dungeon page but you can’t really read it. Sadz 🙁

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/494628/raiders-of-the-forlorn-god?1892600

Level 13 - The Caverns of Slime
By Alex Schroeder, Lior Wehrli, Chris Roberts
Level 8+

The waterfall from the mushroom forest above passes through this area of powerful myconial
magic. The fungi undulate to a silent music, while phosphorous lights and dancing glow-bugs illuminate dancing shrooms and glistening towers of fungal growth on the steep walls.

This 23 page adventure details level thirteen of The Darkness Beneath and it’s … eleven major areas? It is a magnificent framework in which to die, and is perhaps most similar in play style to D3. A glorious jumble that is all I ever want in my life to be happy.

There’s an overview of the level up front which thankfully details what a typical jaunt in to the Caverns of Slime might look like. Briefly, you descent the Fungal Fall and travel through the Shroom Lords lands to the Spider City. From their you gain river travel on the River Styx, visiting the Bone Crusher and its roaming ghouls and two Panzerships. Perhaps diverting to the Prison of Dis and past the Shark Den (having orcs riding flying sharks …) you can hit up the wizard Gar at his titular Vats of Gar, who can maybe get you out of this place. But you’ll need to get past the Bubbling Stench to the Damn of Ix to disable its blocking power. Past the Eternal Swamp is the passage to the Ooze Lord (feature a 99 foot tall statue …) and, therein, the black door to the last level. You follow all of that? Essentially we have the party stuck on the level and eventually learning what they need to do to get off of it. They travel around to various areas learning things and making friends and enemies until the epic assault, via Ajax, on Mongo.

Essentially, each of those places I mentioned is a little … encounter area? A little place to have an adventure? A little town with shit going down in it? I’m not sure how to describe it. You end up at place X. You poke around, find some shit out, pick up some things or people. Get in to a greater situation going on there and somehow navigate it to end up getting what you want. I’m not sure I would characterize this as a fetch quest or gathering the six parts to the Key of Time. It’s a great big place that you can wander around in a non-linear fashion (although linearly makes sense) and do shit, eventually with the goal of escaping. I don’t know. Nothing I’m describing here is helping, is it?

The Spider City opens wilth a little red-aloud, and then covers some themes for this area for the DM to work with: Darkness, spiders, silver lights, ropes, webs, living on the ceiling. Some bullet points on more theme-like things, like occasional ropes reaching down to the cave floor or the floor being covered with broken bones and husks. Then some typical spider names, a little overview of the area, and a longer section covering events that can happen in the city. This takes up a page and is weird as all fuck. And this is a friendly area.

Everything here is familiar yet bizarre. Like that first level of Darkness Beneath but amped up. Crocodiles, Spiders, Orcs, but amped up and twisted. You could, i suspect, run an entire campaign on this level, or something close to it? That’s no doubt hyperbole, but it feels like it. The bandersnatch fits in well here, and the rolling ceiling fireball maybe just a little too mundane.

An open ended adventuring area with greater goals than looting the dungeon? If each of these was a separate kingdom, above ground, and the party needed to achieve some goal, using them as resources, that might cover this place? But it’s far far weirder. Without, I think, going in to gonzo territory. Whatever that is. I’m gonna sleep with this one under my pillow, even though you’re gonna have to bring every ounce of DMing chops to it. It could, not doubt, be organized and described better. And I don’t give a fuck. It’s magnificent.

The Catacombs under Old Samora
By Phillip H.
Levels 1-3

Generations ago, they were home to a small circle of acolytes that worshipped the powers
of the underworld, Hades foremost among them. Affluent citizens had their dead interred here and the priests performed burial rites and tended graves. With the decline of the city, the place was eventually abandoned and largely forgotten

This ten page adventure details about 45 rooms in some old catacombs/funerary complex. A solid contender and something I’d be happy to run as a drop in.

Ah, Ye Olde Levels 1-3. That’s a rough market. Everyone and their brother has dumped an adventure out for that level. Your adventure competes with past classics, current classics, and things released that the fuckwits don’t yet recognize as classics. This is a tight adventure/dungeon. And I’m reviewing it right after an issue of Ultan …

Catacombs under a slum section of a city, an old mausoleum entrance. Not exactly a secret but not well known either. Inside are graves, prep rooms, some places for the (now gone) priests to maintain the place. And, of course, an evil priest who likes to stretch his legs and visit the place when he needs a short break from his studying about sacrificing babies. Oh, and the drug addicts. That is one of my favorite parts of this. I mean lots of it are pretty good, but that drug-addicts are rock star. It’s a slum/tunnel/sewer hole/mausoleum. OF COURSE there are drug addicts hanging out in it. Or, as they are called, the sewer-folk “These squalid, drug-addicted humans live in a near-animalistic state in the sewers below the city” I love this kind of shit. There’s something so real about it. It grounds you. It gets you out of that bullshit fantasy orc stabbing mindset. What’s real, what’s a threat, what’s not a threat? If you went wandering around If you’re out doing some urban exploring, entering those holes in Pogues Run, what find you run across? Some kids. A large group of them? Are they dangerous? How about some homeless? Just homeless? Drug addicts? Desperate and looking for an easy score? Are you an easy score? Wanna posture some? Does that make things worse? WHat else is down there? This is great.

And, it does that thing that certain adventures do where you get fucked up coming OUT of the dungeon. Maybe some thugs out to score something easy. Hope one of those sewer-people didn’t tip them off. Or, the law, looking for a cut and kickback tax. This is all so great!
Oh, and did we mention that the sewer people are afraid? Some of them go missing … yup, it’s ghouls! Yeah ghouls! As serial killers/conpiracy/urban folktales! And the place has HORDES in it. There are some places where there are A LOT of ghouls, or a ALOT of jerlamaine/rat type people in their lair. And, of course, we all know that the lair is where the loot is. As is the tomb of the elf dude that is dangerously trapped. No pain no magic armor you murder hobo wannabes!

Writing is a little on the mundane side. Not bad, just not good. “Enormous empty washing basin cut from grey marble. Bas-reliefs on the basin walls depict a paradisiacal afterlife. A cracked painting of the night sky on the domed ceiling.” There’s nothing particularly wrong with that. It doesn’t overstay and it doesn’t pad shit out. It a decent solid workmanlike description, which makes it better than 90% of the shit being published. I’m just always hoping for a little more. The designer does, though, do a pretty good job of noting specific details. And, of course, specificity is the soul of narrative. In a room with a well “Claw marks in the hard earthen shaft were made by creatures climbing up and down” GREAT detail! SHould scare the fuck out of the party. Provides a hint. That’s all good D&D. In another place there’s a door with a raven carved in it. Fuck around and the raven comes to life to attack you. And when/if it dies it leaves a jewel. The overloaded context here is WONDERFUL.

The map is good. Decent detail, same level stairs, statues and so on. The locked/secret/concealed doors do get quite a bit hard to read, but, otherwise, the map is a good one. Hand drawn, which has its own charm and I kind of prefer. Except you do have to take care that things are legible. Like those fucking door codes, which are NOT.

Overall, a good little dungeon. Solid. It’s not winning an award, but it’s a good example of what you do. Platonic, even. It’s only ten pages long. And it does much much more with those ten pages than adventures four or five times its length.

Fight On! #15 is $5 at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/489776/fight-on-15-spring-2024-pdf-version?1892600

Billman
Novis Ludis
OSE
Levels 2-3

The monks who used to live in the Monastery of the Unknown Path followed the teachings of Vyncis, a charismatic philosopher-cleric of Fharlanghn who founded the monastery centuries ago. Vyncis was a devout, somewhat militant and disciplined acolyte with a unique philosophy of how to honor their god. Essentially, Vyncisian monks were devotees of Fharlanghn who actively and persistently tested the skills needed to truly follow unknown and potentially dangerous paths, as directed by their deity

This fifteen page adventure uses seven pages to describe about forty rooms on two pages of the 1e DMG sample dungeon. It does not live up to the gygax sample rooms, padding boring room entries. The lessons of the sample rooms are lost here.

Yes, this is Yet Another attempt at the sample dungeon in the 1e DMG. It does appear to have a significant hold over gamers. Or, at least, gamers of a certain age. I guess ol Skull Mountain had quite a bit less impact on folks; sorry Domed City, no one loves you! Anyway, this is yet another attempt at the Sample Dungeon. It uses a fucked up format.

Basically you get a little room description (more on that later) and then some section headings. Monster. Treasure. Trick/Trap. Two monsters in the room? Then you get two Monster headings. The problem with this, at least how its implemented here, is the severe disconnect between the room description and the other sections. The description might just be of, say, idk, a throne room. And maybe a relatively long description, at that. And then the monster section tells us that there are 123 guards in platemail and a 33rd level fighter on the throne. And then maybe the trap section tells us that there is a giant chasm across the middle of the room. There’s no integration of the room description and the other objects in the room. I like to talk sometimes about the most important things appearing first in a room description. If the door to the room has some special quality, like it it made of obvious gold or is an obvious trap, then that should come first in the room description, not last. It’s the first thing you are going to need when running the room. Likewise if the small room has an ancient red dragon in it then you probably want to say that up front in the room description. It’s the first thing that the party is going to notice/see when they open the door. When you dump this important shit, like a monster or an obvious treasure, down low in the description then you’re making the DM work A LOT hard. “Oh, yeah, uh, I know you said you entered the room, but, also, there’s a ancient red dragon in the room …” Or, you have to read the ENTIRE room description before integrating the entire thing in to your head and then rephrasing it to describe to the party. No. What a good description doe is integrate things so that the DM can run the room, with an initial description, almost immediately. Then, as the party is mulling things over the DM can read further in to the room description. There is no way in fucking hell I am running a game in which I have to take a minute or two to read a room description and pause the game while doing so before the party gets a chance to act. This is NOT a trivial amount of time, to read and grok and rephrase an entire room description, put together in your head. It’s fucking boring while the DM does it. It’s part of a boring game.

And the room descriptions here are not real solid. Let us look at this gem: “Approaching the door is enough to hear a haunting, moaning sound that rises and falls in an irregular way. The goblins forbade the bandits from entering this room because they feared the moaning sound was a ghost, and the goblins did not want the ghost disturbed.” That’s great. It tells us almost the fuck nothing about the room. It’s long, full of backstory, it’s awkwardly worded and padded out. And all it tell us, in terms of gameable content, is that there is a moaning sound coming from the door. What are you doing man? What value does this add?  “the hobgoblin corpse was part of Lurantu’s gang (see areas 35-38) who went off exploring on his own, got mortally wounded by the ghouls, and managed to escape here before dying of his wounds.” NO ONE CARES ABOUT THIS!!!!! It doesn’t add anything at all to the game! And the room descriptions are full of this shit. It distracts. It’s a waste. The designer focused on this instead of a real, gameable, room description. And when were not getting backstory then were getting something like “The tomb of a former abbot of the monastery is in the small 10×10 room down a tight, 5’ wide hallway” That’s your room description. That’s it. Exciting for the tomb of the former abbott, eh? And, then, sometimes, the cross-references are off. In one room you can turn things white colored, bleaching them out. And the cross-reference tells us this could be useful for room 29. Except, the way to get in to room 29 is in the description for room 28. This is pretty obvious stuff. This is why we have external editors or playtesters who are not the designer. The designer knows what is going on because they created it. The rest of us have to rely on what the designer typed up to help us understand it. There’s not really an evocative description in the entire thing. 

Finally, a note about the room design. There is, I think, a notable difference between the gygax rooms and the rest of the rooms. There is a tendency, in dungeons, to put one thing in each room. This is the thing that this room holds. We can contrast this with rooms that have multiple things going on in them, a far far more interesting way to develop and present a room for play. And we can see a couple of examples of this in the first couple of rooms that gygax presents here. In room one we have those spiderwebs in it. And the spiders in the webs. And then tha bags in the room. And the yellow mold on the bags. The treasure, and then a stuck secret door that has swelled. Multiple elements in the room. Lots ot explore and discover, all in one room, without it feeling like it is empty room. And the descriptions for the rooms, presented by gygax in the sample dungeon, follow on to this. Multiple things in the room, and yet the rooms feeling natural. As opposed to most of the rest of the dungeon presented here, or in most products.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $1. There’s no preview, but, it’s PWYW, so, you know … I might also note that there is no level description present on the cover or marketing  …

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/493535/a-sample-dungeon?1892600

By Ben Laurence
Through Ultan's Door
OSR/1e
Levels 1-4

The Apartments of the Guildless, a dynamic pointcrawl through abandoned chambers, ruined temples, arcades and sunken courtyards, where the outcasts of Zyan are hunted by stuttering puppet automata. Visit the convent of the crawling nuns! Hear haunting flutes amidst trembling fungal woods! And much more!

This double issue (two 32 page digest zines) is a … description of a home base and a small  region around it? Ben’s shit is very good. I joined his Patreon because I like good shit. 

I read some book. It was talking about the cultural heroes in certain societies. It made the point that in order to be a cultural hero you had to 1) be recognized as a part of that society and 2) exhibit traits outside of that society. So, if a Japanese Salaryman represents Japan, then you can’t be a Japanese hero by being a very good Salaryman. You have to be a weirdo artist or something, defying the expectations and conventions that the Salaryman represents. 

I take note of this today because of Through Ultan’s Door. We are awash in trade dress. In the 5e DMsGuild templates, for covers. In art styles that all look the same, the generic heroic fantasy of today. 

Then you stumble across the covers for Through Ultans Door. Clearly, something else is going on here. Someone has a clear and strong artistic vision in the art direction, which is consistent with the gaming environment presented. You are about to hit something different, the cover tells us. The art absolutely sets the vibe and contributes to it, which is exactly what the art SHOULD do. Yeah, I know, I never talk about art. Because it seldom accomplishes that. But it certainly the fuck does here. 

So, I don’t know the fuck how to review this double issue. I’m not sure it’s an adventure, and all I really know how to do is review adventures. I’m terribly excited by this … setting(?), so much so I joined Bens Patreon. The first two issues clearly had site based adventures in them. This one is a little different. It feels like this is the start of a larger world coming in focus, but a game world, meant to play, not a gazeteer. Let us imagine you are publishing a megadungeon and you release a few levels of it. Then you decide that you should also release a home base, a town to venture forth from, as well, perhaps, as the environs nearby that the party might end up in  or travel through. That seems entirely appropriate, yes? So if we view Ultans Door as episodic entries in a dungeon, or, in the context of a larger, completed, work, then a home base and the environes for travel seem like something that should be present. Indeed, my own standards indicate that I enjoy a little ‘wilderness’ journey to get to the dungeon. Thus the setting in which we find ourselves in this double issue of number three.

The volumes cover a system of movement through the undercity and searching for secrets, etc, on the way. And what secrets they are! The hidden pirate lair. The witch/hag lair, and the sewer dragons lair. Shades of wandering in to that lich room in D2. 

It then transitions, in the second volume, in to a description of a kind of home base, of sorts. A leper colony, full of folks suffering from the weirdo diseases. More like a prison, with trustees and perhaps chanelling that scene in Ridick in the prison (complete with elevator). You have the trustees, the gang of invalids who kind of look out for each other, and then, descending sometimes, the guild of healers, weird beyond pale in their own right. We;ve given mostly the social setting present, with the mundanity of buying and selling not present. This is a place to rest and perhaps get sucked in to intrigue, without gearing up again. 

Following that is a kind of regional setting. The locations detailed in issues one and two are noted, as well as a few others that really fall in to less of the site-based-adventure category and more of the “fucked up place to visit” category, perhaps with some motivation to do some stabbing or leverage their own intrigues. 

The opium induced environment is strongly visioned, as they have been in all of the issues so far, with excellent descriptions of creatures, weird environments that successfully channel, more than anything else, the AMR Barker and Dreamlands-ish visions that we all hope for when we dig in to one of their vaguely dreamlike adventures/settings. Ben really does an excellent job with the descriptions and in communicating a vision; the vibe is ridiculously strong here. Things perhaps get a little longer in the text here than is immediately comfortable, and could perhaps use just a tad more formatting to help draw attention, but the overall effect is magnificent.

The toad people : “Their pale clammy hide is speckled with pus-dripping carbuncles. Fleshy sacks hang to either side of pot-bellied stomachs, topped by heads like misshapen toads. They wear jewelry fashioned from sewer trash and ill-fitting stained clothing ripped from water-logged corpses … with excellent manners.”

Given the episodic nature of my reviews, and the episodic nature of Ultans door, and in particular this double issue, its hard for to review this. And, I don’t think I have, I have just described it. As a standalone product its hard to recommend. But, seen as the first chapter to a larger dungeon, the base and environs, it fits in perfectly well. I’m excited to see more.

This is $10 at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/364621/through-ultan-s-door-3-double-issue?1892600

By Stephen Smith
Mister Smith Design
BECMI
Levels 1-3

A peaceful village of fisher folk and artisans. A friendly community safely perched high above the raging sea. On the surface life is grand, but who knows what trouble lies below?

This 54 page supplement details a small seaside village and an even small cave/dungeon, using eight pages to describe about fifteen rooms in it. There’s an ability here, to describe a decent scene, but it’s squandered on a weird disconnect between the vibe of the room and the DM notes for the room. I’m not mad at this, just a little puzzled at what it’s trying to do.

Nice production values on this, with clear easy to read maps of the dungeon and a layout style that is not overly busy but does a decent job of focusing the attention. This is combined with some art that I don’t hate and in some cases kind of love, but I can recognize that some effort was spent on it and making it try to fit in to the vibe. And I say all of this and lead off the review with it because I was fully expecting a load of garbage. Those things, plus the obligatory background story/boring page, plus all of the title page crap didn’t get me in a place where I was expecting something good. And then the hooks started in, with the usual variations of “you are hired to …” … I was pretty much dreading what was coming. And then I got to the missing child hook. Where mayor dickcheese offers to replenish your food supplies if you find the missing kid they think went in to the old sea cave below. And that hook ends with “ (SPOILER ALERT: Little Timmie was hiding in the tool shed the whole time).” Woah … ok. The kids name is Timmy and he’s in the shed while the party is getting gutted? That’s my kind of twist! Things are looking up!

The next set of pages is devoted to the small village, its places and people. This goes on WAY too long. But, also, it’s going on too long in a weird way. So, the map of the village is keyed, which doesn’t help much, you have to refer back to the text to find out where something is on the map. And the various buildings/businesses don’t really get much of a description at all. Just a sentence or two. Props for not droning on, but those descriptions are VERY generic and don’t really say anything at all interesting about the place. So, then, what’s the point of the description? Let’s take this one “1. Fishmonger — fresh, smoked, dried, and salted fish, scallops, shellfish.” Did that add anything to the description of “Fishmonger?” And while it’s a single sentence, a few others go on for two or three or one long one. But they don’t really add any value to anything. Except, then, you run across “Naturopath — Ocean based dietary aids for allergies, headaches, fatigue, chronic pain, sleep and digestive disorders.” Well … ok. I’m noticing a trend here, of the designer slipping in, slyly, some pretty good shit. But, also, there’s a tackle shop, with a description? What’s the purpose of that?

And then there’s quite the long section of the people in the town. Again, this is mostly bullshitty useless padding, telling ups in a sentence or three why this person is the typical generic fantasy villager. And then we get to “Ongoing lunch feud with a pelican.” or “They and their twin always dress exactly alike” or “practices flirting with seagulls.” That fucking shit is great! That’s what I’m buying a D&D supplement for! I don’t give a fuck about generic bustling fantasy tavern. But the barmaid learns her flirting skills by practicing on gulls? GOLD! And the fucking thing takes a turn here. Every NPC in the village has this kind of shit for them. It’s great! It’s just like Pembrocktonshire, except the fucking entries are padded out uselessly and it takes far more space, thanks to that clear formatting/layout, to cram in the same amount of people.

The dungeon is about fifteen rooms, half sea caves and half carved out. The descriptions here range from ok to useless. The first entrance room is ok “On approach of this hollowed fissure, the sound of the crashing waves echo against the sheer rock face. Although once much larger, the passage is now choked with rubble. The gap is low, narrow, and just wide enough for one person to enter at a time. The rocky walls are slick with saltwater and the tangy odor of brine fills the air.” I get what the designer is going for, and it’s an ok job. The “Although once larger” thing is cumbersome, and the entire thing could be edited to get that vibe across a little better. But, also, it’s not terrible at all. Each room has something like that, not exactly read aloud, but more communicating things to the DM. Which is generally fine. Until we get to something like “K) The Morgue Several stone slabs serve as a temporary holding space for the recently deceased. Presently empty” Supposed to fire my imagination? Indeed DEVO, he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me. 

What follows, after this little not-read-aloud text, is something called “DM Insights”, for each room. This would be your DM text. For that Mortuary room it says “Shadows. (see Bestiary on pg 41) Treasure: Potion of Diminution” And this is the major disconnect I’m having. I don’t understand this. That room, in particular, is essentially as minimally keyed as Vampire Queen. The others do have a bit more description to them, but the DM Insights are almost always this kind of minimal keying. It’s more than a little rattling to come across, and I’m not sure why. It feels disconnected from each other. As if the room proper and the monster/loot somehow are not integrated at all. There are hints, here and there, of things. One room, wet, has a milky substance spread out in it … and it turns out there are giant spiders in the DM Insights section. So, sure, I guess that ties the two together? I kind of get what the designer is going for … a strong enough initial section and then a DM section that just clarifies things. I don’t think, though, that the initial sections are really strong enough on their own. 

I might say that I can draw parallels to the dungeon as a whole and the town also. The sea saves turn in to a mortuary complex, turn in to a temple for Deep Ones. It’s a kind of linear map (but with monster names on it for reaction purposes. Yeah) But the entire thing feels pretty disconnected from each other. Not like you are in zones but rather “and then heres the mortuary complex!” for some reason. And, then, the inclusion of the town, or, rather, the amount of length spent on the town description. That’s a lot of text to support a small fifteen room dungeon (with some 5HD bosses in it …) It just feels like things are disconnected to each other and that they don’t vibe well … it’s not as blatant as a funhouse dungeon, but it sticks out. 

This would have been MUCH better concentrating on the unique parts and minimizing the “typical fantasy” parts. A better integration both in the dungeon format, the dungeon proper, and the dungeons relation to the town. There is clearly a sly wink attitude here, which is wonderful, and the ability to turn a phrase to describe something. But the rest of it falls down. It’s not terrible, but I’m not sure why I would select this to play.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is eighteen pages with a great selection of town, dungeon, and bestiary. Great preview!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/479070/a-problem-in-port-haven?1892600