The Lair of the Brain Eaters

Posted on July 17, 2023 by Bryce Lynch

By DM Ritzlin

No Artpunk #2

1e

Levels 1-3

The secret caves beneath the necropoli of Desazu are riddled with danger and nefarious evil. A bizarre cult led by a perverse necromancer has been desecrating graves and plundering corpses for their own foul uses. Who will put an end to their heinous deeds? Only those brave enough to venture into… THE LAIR OF THE BRAIN EATERS

This 13 page bonze-agy dungeon is set in tunnels under a cemetery. Sub-humans, undead, and rats combine with some leftover temple elements to give a straightforward crawl with utilitarian descriptions. It’s heart is in the right place, but comes off staid.

This has some good things going for it. You’ve got some great in-voice rumors and non-standard potions (eat some brains!) and descriptive treasures. Who doesn’t want The Nycoptic Manuscripts, (unless you’re looking for the unabridged edition?)  Or, to eat the brain of a giant to get giant strength?  Or, a skill with a gold tooth? Nothing like doing a little desecration when you’re in the tunnels under the cemetery. It’s also got some decent interactivity … in place. A wooden plank laid out on the floor in an empty room … why is that there? That’s weird. Except it runs over a pit hidden by an illusionary floor. Pay the fuck attention, kiddos, or suffer for it. Several of the monsters get a retheme. Humans get to be shaggy subhumans, mutated by eating diseased brains (a nod to our British games?) while rats, in places, breathe fire. When this thing hits it hits well. A giant venus flytrap with little buds that look like brains. “The Yoinog do not find these “impossible brains” nearly as savory as the real thing, but a man’s gotta eat…” A sly little comment like that warms my heart. And the fact that it manages to take a standard monster, tweak it a bit, and then make it fit perfectly in to the adventure? Gold. We get a rough little order of battle in places and a decent number of traps and specials without it seeming like that’s all the dungeon it.

And yet I’m left feeling more than a little disappointed in it. The descriptions of the rooms are very workmanlike. Not much imagery to be found, and an emphasis on … I don’t know … the facts of the room? It tells you, matter of factly, what is in the room, without embellishment or joy. A main room has a couple of statues in it “On either side of the wall separating the two rooms is a statue of Veshakul-a, the goddess of death, similar to the one in area 19, although these are 5½’ tall.” And, there’s a gotcha or two, like a room whose doors swing shut and wizard lock. *sigh*. 

I get it that writing a good description is hard, but thats what sets an plain adventure apart from a good one. You gotta work this shit. And “This colony of rats made its way into Obb

Nyreb’s enchanted brain supply.” ain’t gonna do it for me. You want to describe the smell, the crunchy floor, and so on. Give them DM something to work with to riff on. The encounters don’t overstay their welcome, but in many cases they don’t really provide much in the way of that vibe that can turn a book roll on a table in to something that really hits home. 

This needs to be tightened up. The room descriptions need a good edit. Both to remove filler word and place important things first, and to amp up the room environments a bit. I’m not talking set piece shit, and there’s always a place for an empty chamber with just a spiral staircase in it, but rooms like the rats nest are a good example of what is just expanded minimalism. Which I do not like. And, once you look at that room and make it better, why not do the main rooms also?

Before I regert this one, I want to touch on the entrances to the dungeon. There are two. The main entrance is in a mausoleum in the cemetery. It’s got nothing special to it on the outside and the inside entrance is well hidden. It’s not gonna be easy for the party to find. And, the lead in to this adventure is nothing special either. What this means is there’s some implied work for the DM to do. The DM is going to have to conjure up a stake out in the cemetery, maybe some tracks, or the party following people at night. I like this. I know, I know, I usually bitch about the adventure supporting the DM. But, this doesn’t mean that we need to spoon feed the DM. You can absolutely leave things for the DM to embellish and build on. As long as you do it well. And I think this does. It uses only a sentence or two, if that, to set things up. But, once combined with the rumours table, the party is heading in the right direction and the DM can fill in this little bit, just as the DM might fill in an inn or town or hook to get the rumours from. The second entrance is in the woods behind the cemetery, which a certain rumour might lead the party to. Good job on the entrances, and the mausoleum especially, feels like your entering in to a dungeon.

https://princeofnothing.itch.io/no-artpunk-ii

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | 4 Comments

The Arcane Font of Hranadd-Zul

Posted on July 15, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Daedalus
No Artpunk #2
1e
Levels 2-4

A MAGIC POOL grants knowledge of arcane spells to anyone who bathes at the full moon but in exchange, the bather’s physical and mental abilities are slowly depleted.

This 25 page adventure uses about nine pages to describe a dungeon with about 25 rooms. Good interactivity, for its size, with smatterings of good descriptions are detracted by a large amount of whitespace. Packs a decent punch in a wrapping that only a mother could love.

So, what do I mean by all of that? What we have here is what could be called, in Bryce jargon, a real dungeon. It’s got creatures, tricks, traps, and secrets to unlock. Interactivity, factions, and varied terrain. All of the great elements that surround and contribute to a great dungeon crawl. It’s got one of the better Dyson maps. Caves, rooms, same level stairs, a bridge over a chasm to cross, secret doors and statues all show up on the map, contributing to a vibe that is more than a simple map. And it noted major features on the map, along with a wanderers table, to help support the DM in play. My only complaint here, with the map, is that it feels rather constrained. As if the dungeon should be a bit larger. It’s not like the rooms are on top of each other, generally, but that it feels like it needs one more breathe ot two to really give it the expanse that a good dungeon needs. 25 rooms is no slouch of a five roomer, but the size makes it feel more like a good dungeon at the end of an investigation, rather than something that stands on its own.

I’m a big fan of the interactivity in this one. The place is chock full of stuff without it seeming like its full of set pieces. You’ve got a statue, pointing, in one of the first rooms. There’s a double dose here. Not only does the pointing statue involve some interaction, but, it also provides a hint to puzzles deeper in the dungeon. Another room, full of broken up furniture has an intact weapons rack in remarkably good shape. A mimic. And that’s something this dungeon does very well indeed: providing clues for the player that is paying attention. Bodies and abandoned campsites provide clues and hints as to what is going on. It ramps up the tension to find a dead body, and what killed it. The players get a bit worried. And are prepared for whats coming  … if they care to pay attention. And this dungeon does that over and over again. It’s never hitting you over the head with it, but it seems natural. Really well done.

And the other encounters, not falling in to this category of hints and puzzles/traps, tend to the more interesting side as well. Ye Olde Bridge Over The Chasm has spiders in webs, high above, providing a nice little encounter. And the creatures in the dungeon, the intelligent ones, have some goals an motivations. SOme things going on with them that the players could exploit. Never going too far, and not really forcing that interactivity on to the players, but it’s there for the DM, in their motivations, should the players try and do a good job of not just stabbing. 

Descriptions are hit or miss. Out first room is the entrance, of course, an opening in a low escarpment outside. A simple worked limestone post and lintel frame without a door. Weathered carvings on it. A dark cool and silent interior. That’s not bad. It’s also, I think, one of the best descriptions. So, good job with your mythic underworld entrance, but, things do tend to fall down after that. Simple facts with few appeals to imagery. It really needs more in this area. 

And it’s not helped by the god awful formatting. Two column, with a lot of the rooms taking a full column. This isn’t necessarily wordiness, but rather large margins and line spacing. There’s too much in the wat ot bolding, underlines, and bullets. It’s too much to take in at once. There’s an attempt to follow a rough outline for a room, noting general features up front and then going in to more detail in the bullets, but the spacing, and degree of formatting, is just too much to follow easily. 

This is a real dungeon. Or, at least as much as one can say that in 25 rooms. I’m not find of the lack of interesting descriptions, and the format is a mess to comprehend text with. But, the interactivity here, the understanding of what a dungeon should and should not be, is all here. That is pretty rare, indeed. But these days you don’t get to the Bryce Best list unless you’re firing on all chambers. (Which is a lie, I’m a hypocrite, but, whatever.) Nice to see this one. 

https://princeofnothing.itch.io/no-artpunk-ii

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | 20 Comments

The Carcass of Hope

Posted on July 12, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Zherbus
No Artpunk #2
1e
Levels 3-4

An affluent family crypt turned defunct in the idyllic town of Hope that was destroyed. In those crypts, riches are buried with the dead tempt adventurers. As the evils that have made the

ruins of Hope its home, a cult has turned its eye toward the crypt and the powerful artifact hidden within.

This 25 page adventure details a tomb with about fifty rooms, as well as several other slightly smaller sites, all around the ruins of the town of Hope. It’s one of the better tomb-style adventures, and when it tries to succeed it does so easily. It could use just a little more trying though.

Ok, Lord Derec loses his wife in childbirth, tries some magic, turns in to a vampire-thing, and slaughters everyone in the nearby town of Hope. That’s 25 years ago.The family crypt probably has some loot in it … let’s go redistribute some of that filthy aristo lucre to the more deserving … us!

A few things separate this adventure from being published today. FIrst, it’s almost a small regional setting. We get a town, a couple of adventuring sites, and support tables that are generally unheard of these days in the slapdash five-room dungeon world we now inhabit. And, the content is flavourful. When it’s trying anyway. At best, it’s descriptions are rock solid and at worst you’re getting something with a bit more oomph than the typical STonehell or Barowmaze room. And the same can be said for interactivity. For, while this faces the same “it’s a tomb dungeon” issues that ALL of those face, it handles those challenges of interactivity and staidness better than the typical tomb dungeon does. 

I’m not real sure where to start, and I think that’s a good sign. The descriptions, I guess. “An monolithic abandoned tower, tapering up to an implied horizon of fog. It sits atop a hill full of a hundred gravemarkers of swords, pitchforks, and axes with a few skeletal trees reaching toward the tower’s height.” Hey hey! That’s not bad! Good imagery with the fog and the sword/etc gravemarkers. The very first room, the entrance to the main crypts, tells us: “An archway swallows a wide set of stone stairs, littered with refuse, into the darkness for over 20 feet. In the depths, Four pillars run through the center of the room leading their way to hallways east and west. Two angelic statues frame sealed double stone doors to the north. Graffiti on the double doors reads simply ‘MURDERER’.” The archway SWALLOWS the stair. Depths. Statues FRAME doors. It’s a good description. Imagined and then transcribed in to words, which allows the DM to fully visualize it and grok its vibe, and thus communicate it far, far better than a lesses description would. “20’ stairs down. The two statues beside the doors are of angels. The door has MURDERER painted on it.” The murderer thing is good, in both descriptions. 🙂 I might have added an adjective or adverb to the MURDERER graffiti, but it’s good. This ability to describe thing extends to other aspects of the adventure as well. Some bracers of defense made out of human flesh, for example. (And I choose to read FLESH and not skin. I want mine gooey and not leather!) 

This is not, however, universally. A scarab an insanity sits in the same room. Plate mail +1 is nearby … none of which get anything more to them. And for every great description there stands another which is more mundane. More than Barrowmaze but not really reaching the heights I’d be looking for. “A grim reaper statue stands in the southeast corner” is not the height of evocative prowess. 

The more expansive nature of the adventure is appreciated. The town is ok; each business you might need gets a sentence or two descriptions … a nice change of pace from the usual room/key shit. They are generally adequate, if a little boring. But you also get a fine rumor table full of things to fuck with the players with, along with folk giving therumors well described. And you can hire a decent number of people  in town … the NPC’s you are interacting with for rumors or services. The surrounding countryside is ok as well, with (four?) other adventuring sites. An abandoned tower (that one with the gravestone swords), a cave full of cultists (isn’t it always?), some lizard men .. and a little table for minor crypts and other support tables. Really unusual to find an environment like this.

I can, and will, quibble with this. The town could be beefed up a bit and I think, perhaps, maybe the barest thread of plot would have done here. Put the front door key in the lizard man lair or have some other pretext to get the cult involved, for example. It’s ALMOST there; it just needs a few more things to tie things together just SLIGHTLY more. 

Formatting, for the main encounter keys, it pretty solid. A short little description of two or three sentences followed by some bullets to followup on core things in the room. Bolding and such used to good effect. It’s clear and easy to locate information. There are misses here and there. Town services listed by name instead of service, or a town rumor buried in the description of a location in the forest. 

I’m a fan of the encounters, though, for the most part. Especially in the context of a tomb. Tomb adventures tend, I think, to be some of the most boring. Some undead and traps. Yawn. This one, though, goes a little further. The map, while some what symmetrical and not the most complex, is much much better than most tomb maps, with a couple of loops and some detail. Yeah, there are traps. A decent number of them. The better ones have some detail which makes them more situations than traps. A statue clutching a spear (which turns out to be magic) that you can remove. And then get sprayed in the face by poison if you do so. “Play stupid games and win stupid prizes” or “Fuck around and find out” should be the official motto of D&D and then situations, such as that one cited, embody those mottos then you’ve got good interactivity. Go ahead. DO that thing you want to do. You know you want to. And, there’s an undead or two you can talk to and interact with … even the main vampire dude. (Which, to its credit, is more like a black cloud with a red eye and inky pseudopods, to quote the text. Nice vampire! 

Really one of the better done dungeons/regions/adventures I’ve seen lately. I’m going to be an ass and not give it a Best though. A little more tying things together, along with more consistency with descriptions, and, somehow, a little more in the way of variety int he main dungeon. Or, maybe not variety. Less of a static vibe? Yeah yeah, it’s a tomb, the very definition of static. But, also, we’re playing D&D. You want the players to feel the death/static/tomb vibe but you want some shit going on also. Life is tough. I’m an asshole. I really do like this one, perhaps more than a Regerts would imply. But, it’s still Regerts.

https://princeofnothing.itch.io/no-artpunk-ii

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 3, No Regerts, Reviews | 5 Comments

Under Mount Peikon

Posted on July 10, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Wagner
Self Published/No Artpunk 2
1e
Levels 3-8

Long time ago, under mountain named Peikon, lied the fortress-monastery beholden to guarding the most disasterous secret of dwarvenkind. A combination of prison, temple and ruin, it held the worst criminals of dwarvenkind – those whose crimes had forever severed them from the dwarven race. Well-guarded by the most qualified of dwarven gaolers, the laxening of its security could only be excused by law of entropy, and its distant grandson; erosion – the slow killer that comes to all mountains eventually.

This 39 page single column text describes a dwarf dungeon, with verticality, with about 22 rooms. It’s certainly unique, in both the good and bad contexts of the word. I’m never gonna run the thing. Nor is anyone else. Which is a shame. 

I guess the closest analogy, for this adventure, might be White Plume Mountain. Maybe. The rooms here are a mix between puzzle-like things (sometimes literally, like a chessboard) or rooms that have bend towards something puzzle-like. Or situation-like? Neither seem really fair. There’s some shit going on in this place and  almost every room is involved. And as a result many of the rooms feel like a puzzle, or a Special. It’s really REALLY fucking hard to explain what is going on with the rooms. I’ll come back to this.

The map has a good deal of verticality to it. As a result there is both a traditional two dimensional map as well as a more isometric map that shows the relationship of height to the various rooms. More than this, the rooms, prepper, have verticality to them, with different heights being important to them.  Ladders and tunnels to the top of them, towering overhead. It brings a refreshing dimension to play. Related to this, there are six entrances to the dungeon, most of them tied to a specific hook. The base hook is an entrance on the top that is discovered via airship. Thus you explore the hollowed out mountain from the top down. (Speaking of this, the place is large. Each “square” on the map is not 10’. Or 5’. But, rather, the distance a man can move in one turn. Or, rather “One full movement.” In any event, the scale IS large, but probably not mountain-filling large. One ‘Y’ corridor is, I think, 180’ wide and 1260 feet long. BTW: the grid squares on the map are totally not suited for this sort of thing. Whatever. Cute idea to represent scale.)

The descriptions are absolute garbage. That’s not why you are using this adventure. Room two is an underground lake, with a couple of skeletons in it. The last sentence of the (short one para) description reads “Then they will try to use sharpened hand-bones to cut the ropes of the bridge while tesspassers are still on it.” I note, this is the first mention of a bridge. Looking at both map, along with the description, I can put things together. And that’s what’s going on in this adventures descriptions. You have to REALLY work at what is going on. Transitioning to room three, it’s labeled Night Dwarves. There is … a page? Of text that describes the night drwarf culture and history. Essentially a bad monster manual description. Then finally, you get to the statue of a giant octopus that is OUTSIDE their room. Then, finally, the fat that they are usually gathered around the fireplace in the room while playing cards. Except for one of them. Jesus h christ. There IS no rhyme or reason to what is put ni a room or the order it is put in a room. It just is. Hang on and go with it. In one place you find a bronze sword of wounding (taken from the infamous Garrun bloodletter)” How do you know this? Useless background. 

But, man, the actually the fuck rooms. Like a nightmare of Grimtooth. Some fucked up dragon, a bunch of dwarves, a wizard from the future. Clerics. And this Deathfoam shit all over the place … a kind of last resort trap for the prison complex. Room after room after room of weird shit going on. 

I don’t know. Maybe, one day, dude will get on the right drugs and produce something usable  by the general populace. But that day ain’t today. Rooms of content, that you REALLY have to want to wade through. And I don’t. I’ll just go run Thracia.

https://princeofnothing.itch.io/no-artpunk-ii

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, God Effort, Reviews | 24 Comments

Shrine of the Small God

Posted on July 8, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Ben Gibson
No Artpunk #2
B/X
Levels 3-5

In the high and lonely plateau lies the forgotten shrine to Oleracea, petty-god of cabbages. Abandoned for centuries since his worshipers all died in conquest and drought, buried by the vengeful god of earth, the petty-god fell into a deep and fitful slumber in his chamber, slowly shrinking as even his name was forgotten. The rains came back and now the shrine plateau is covered by flowering cabbage, appreciated only by the wild vicuñas who browse among the fallen stones. Until the ship-men came, with their explorers and plunderers hungry for gold. In their hunger for ancient temples to pillage, even the rumored shrine of a supplanted agricultural deity draws explorers.

This eleven page adventure uses about four pages to describe about thirty rooms in  a two level dungeon/shrine to a petty god. Interesting flavour, good interactivity, decent descriptions here and there combine with described treasure to create a nice environment that could only be helped by lightening up a bit on the wall of text paragraph descriptions … for descriptions that are not very long to begin with.

This adventure has a light meso-america vibe going on. I get the sense it’s some kind of Andes locale or something? Vaguely south american? It doesn’t really matter much. The appeals to a foreign setting are both light and  in depth. Meaning that, on the surface level, it’s got this continual Andes vibe going on. There are enough references that it kind of feels like you’re in a foreign dungeon. One alien to your eure vibes of the past. And yet it’s not over the top in its detail here. You don’t get sentence after sentence of detail for trivia that doesn’t matter. And you don’t get shit that is going to be overly hard to integrate in your campaign. This isn’t some kind of LotFP thing with conquistadors running around and some kind of heavy catholic guilt present in the adventure. It’s got some shit from In Search Of. Aztec mummies, guinea pigs, llamas and shit. Good enough, mostly. Maybe a little more scene setting, another paragraph about mountains, snows, andes-like town or something. But, anyway, andes-like setting.

Blah blah blah. Commentary about the adventure you don’t care about, just like the above paragraph from me. Let’s talk about something interesting. The thing that really sets this adventure apart. You get the sense in this that Ben really thought about the rooms and then described them. Then, later, came back and figured out what the game mechanics should be. I don’t know. I’m not describing it well.

There’s this thing I sometimes mention. As with most subjects, I can describe the negative case much better than the positive one. You draw five rooms. Connect them with a corridor. You roll for a thing in room one and it says trap. You go to the book and pick out a trap from the book. A poison dart trap. It has mechanics listed. You write something like “Poison dart trap is in this room. Roll a save vs dex or take 2d4 damage.” Essentially, what the book says. Maybe you theme it up a bit with the darts shooting from snake heads or something instead of just holes in the wall. Whatever. The book said trap and it said dart trap so you copied the text from the book. This is the realm of the five room dungeon. Of low-effort and low imagination visions for the dungeon. The designer constrains themselves by what is known. It is either implicit or explicit, the list of things that the designer is picking from.

Contrast this then to opposite. You imagine the room. The taste the vision, the smell, whatever. You let the mind wander and come up with some kind of imagine the mids oeye of what the rooms is. It’s vibe. It’s encounter. Whatever. Then you set down to write it up and finally are like “oh, shit, I guess I need to stat that trap also.” [My emphasis here, in this example, is a little too heavy on the mechanics aspect of a trap. What I am describing extends to what is going on in the room and how it is described, moreso than a trap. Mechanics forward adventures are just easy to rag on.] And this kind of “vision first” design is critical, I think, to coming up with something interesting. Either in the evocative descriptions or in the interactivity in the room. And Ben does this well here. Very well. And, as a result, the rooms have a very Situations vibe to them … even when they are not Almost like all of them are traps … even though that would be wrong in every sense of the word.

There’s a room, a trap room explicitly in this case, that has poison darts in the walls. Except, it’s been a long time since they fired. A VERY long time. The darts have decayed till they are dust … thus it’s now kind of like a poison gas room instead of a poison dart room. Very nice! Or, a room with a pair of golden masks in them, on a table. One of them has a melted face stuck to it. A dead body on the floor lies next to the table. With its face missing. NOICE! We’ve got a telegraph. We’ve got a vision of history. We’ve got an EXCELLENT usage of a mask, both in its trap form and in its treasure form. What does a mask look like in an aztec temple? It looks like it’s gold and when it’s trapped its obviously got a face in it. Ben is doing a very good job here. I know, that’s all pretty trap heavy, but, also, a room with, in the darkness, the glowing eyes of The Great Statue seen, flickering, ahead, in the next room down the hallway out. Perfect! And, also, an excellent example of both telling the party what they sense, outside of the room, and that concept of the vista overlook, where you can get glimpses or landmarks when you survey something. Ah! You say, let me go check that out! Along, of course, with the trepidation that comes from approaching any towering statue .. let alone one with flickering red eyes seen in the distance!

I will cite one more example of this design-forward/vision forward style. There’s a small godling in thetemplae/dungeon. A baby, almost. And it has a little dolly. To comfort it. As if to keep it uiet. Which is exactly what it is doing. It’s an earth elemental whose entire job is to keep the little brat from crying. Fuck, yes. This is exactly what a baby eart-type godline has a doll and exactly what the fuck its job is. 

I note two negatives in the adventure. FIrst, this thing is a little rough for level three’s, I think. Yeah, yeah, run away. I’m not even sure, I think, about fives? Anyway, the level range might be off. That’s only a mall issue though. A larger issue is the formatting. It’s not exactly bad. It’s basically just a short paragraph of text for each room. Maybe four sentences or so? That’s pretty good. It keeps things focused, for the most part. Rooms get a generic descriptions (“first genuflectory”) and there’s a light use of bolding and underlines. It’s not terrible. But, also, it does have a tendency to run together a bit. It’s not quite wall of text, but something is up here. Line space? Kerning? I don’t know. It feels like the text needs to bebroken up just a bit more.

This is not, however, the end of the world. It’s a good adventure.

It’s the first adventure in the No Artpunk #2 collection. Which is 250 pages long, and free at itch.

https://princeofnothing.itch.io/no-artpunk-ii

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews, The Best | 3 Comments

The Light in the Church

Posted on July 5, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Christopher Wilson
Self Published
OSE
Levels 1-3

Rumours around the town of Braunhaven speak of seeing lights in the windows of the All Faiths Temple late at night, long after Father Ainsworth has gone to bed for the night.  They talk of seeing fell shadows skulking about the inside of the church.  Is it a foul shade come to the church in search of something lost in its life?  The townsfolk are becoming frightened and somebody needs to investigate…

This 88 page adventure features a dungeon with 44 rooms. Undead and goblinoids stand and fight, with little interactivity beyond that. By which I mean some secret doors and a couple of traps. Disappointing.

This is a basic dungeoncrawl. You’re sent in by an (overly described) priest to see what’s up in the church after dark. Which seems weird since he doesn’t peek in his front door to see goblins ransacking the main sanctuary, but, whatever. The church above has three areas and the “catacombs” underneath have the rest of the 44 rooms. The catacombs are laid out in three corridors, running north south, with rooms hanging off of them. They are connected by another corridor running east west near the entrance. So, not the best exploratory design we’re ever going to encounter. And it’s done in “I used a fancy tile mapmaker” style which makes it hard on the eyes. The doors, in particular, being hard to make out.

Inside we find goblins, hobgoblins, and a variety of undead. There are a number of secret doors and an occasional burial tomb that is trapped. This is the sum of the interactivity in the adventure. So, wanna hack? Here it is. I really can’t stress enough how one dimensional this sort of play is. No talking to folk, no map obstacles or puzzles. Not even an overarching mystery to figure out, since the dudes were sent in to loot by an evil baron and I can’t find any reference, in spite of the conclusion assuming there is one, to the party being able to figure out why the humanoids are in the church catacombs. If all you want to do is stab things, with little sense of exploration, then this is for you. I think that play is sad, but, whatever floats your Wednesday night boat I guess.

Treasure is described ok, at least for the mundane items. Diamond rings, an abundance of tiaras with electrum and emeralds or the like. A holy book of prayers to the old gods. We can see in that last one a lack of real descriptions, as if “a sack with then gems worth 5gp each. A little more in this area would be nice … such as the monogrammed earrings that found in one room. Magic items are generous … a sword of sharpness, a frostbrand and plenty of +1 armours. They do NOT get any sort of description, which is super sad. The allusions to history, prevalent throughout the adventure, do not extend to the magic items. Magic items should have a sense of wonder about them and that’s just not present here. (I note that the Sense Of Wonder comments should apply to exploratory elements as well, which a hack does not generally deliver on.) There are weird misses with the treasure though … I guess youtube to loot the towns tombs? And there are all these gold doors. Which are fake. I thought the doors  were fake but I eventually figured out that the gold is. Except then you encounter some doors with gold inlay … and no notes on how much gold you get for scrapping them off. It’s a weird miss.

Wanderers do something, although it is almost always on patrol or out hunting. Things should drop from the ceiling or creatures be grumbling or some such. Give the DM just a little bit more to work with, to riff on, with your wanderers. The actual creatures get their own page of stat block after each room in which they are encountered, which does a lot to explain the page count; turning a lot of the rooms in to two page affairs. They are full stat blocks, so it’s weird to see continual references to the goblin king and his bodyguards in rooms where they do not exist. Further, there’s no order of battle, so everyone just stands in place and dies. 

The formatting is a little weird. You get the bolded keyword stuff that is common in OSE, with little extra words adding flavour. Then an explicit listing of the exits, then a listing of the treasure, and THEN, finally, a note if there are creatures in the room. This is hella wrong, on many accounts. If the exit is an obvious non-standard feature, like a spiral staircase, then it should be up in the bolded keyword description. Likewise, monsters should feature up high if thats what the party is going to be hit with. A room full of rampaging goblins should not be normally described and then the DM say “oh, yeah, there also a horde of rampaging goblins in it, I guess.”

I don’t hate the OSE style. A main hall (in the title) gives you a framing. Mosaic tiles, dark marble, incense in the air, pews, and stained glass reflections are a good solid foundation for a room description. WAY further down we get the creatures holding flickering cables, shedding odd shadows on the walls. That’s pretty good imagery, if it were up higher anyway.

So, it’s a hack, with above average descriptions of rooms. I wouldn’t be happy with this if it were the main quality of the OSR produced adventures. But, nor would I be raging mad and feeling ripped off like I usually am. It’s a disappointment, but one that could be improved upon. Except, maybe the map. That needs some major rework to turn it in to something. Oh, and also the interactivity. Which sucks.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see shit. Just the first six pages, which is the “what levels  is this for” thing and a blank page included, at that.. Crappy preview for determining if you want to buy the adventure.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/420874/The-Light-in-the-Church?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 8 Comments

Baphomet’s Son

Posted on July 3, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Markus Schauta
Gazer Press
LotFP
Levels 3-4

Given the amount of fungus in the LotFP setting, fungicide is clearly the most valuable treasure.

On behalf of a secret society, the players search for an ancient relic that is said to be hidden under a dilapidated Templar courtyard in Nordhausen. In the musty tunnels, below, they find the remnants of the cult of Baphomet, brought from Jerusalem by the Templars centuries ago. However, the demon once worshipped by the Templars is not what it seems. The dread idol hides otherworldly dangers, and what once evaded the flames of the Inquisition still awaits the return of its savior deep below.

This 108 page digest dungeon adventure uses around fifty pages to describe a multi level dungeon with about seventy rooms. This is a pretty good dungeon, with interesting rooms and encounters and a map that well supports play. One of the best things for Lamentations published in many years now.

You’re sitting in an inn when you hear a gunshot from upstairs. Frank just shot himself. His diary is probably open on the table in front of him, detailing an item in the forbidden Templar catacombs under the town. In you go to face grave robbers, a fuck ton of rats, a few baddies, and the titular son: a fungus infestation and associated thrall. This is a real deal Lamentations style dungeon … the first we’ve maybe seen since the very early days of Lamentations. A touch of history, some low-fantasy vibes with a few permanent magic items and several one-use items, and an enemies list of mostly realistic shit. The fungus trope is a little over done these days, but, whatever; it’s a real Lamentations dungeon for those of you sick of the mini-dungeon or countryside plots. 

It doesn’t have the strongest start. The dungeon doesn’t start till about page 38. Up until then we’ve got backstory and support information for everything under the sun. This gets a little tedious at times, but, you can always just skip to the dungeon. Mostly. There’s a section or two on creatures wandering about in the dungeon (that goes on too long) that is useful. Other than this, it is essentially appendix information appearing instead up front. The rumor table is nice. The town description is decent enough, even if the starting inn does overstay a bit with its many NPC’s (seven?) They are all well described though, as is every NPC in the adventure. A little personality, a few bullets on wants and flaws and you’re done. Nice format for them. And, I suppose those seven NPC’s do have their place, in creating problems for the party up front or opportunities for them later on. It’s just a little thick, but, also, easy enough to ignore what you don’t want I guess. Perhaps a little more focus in this area would have been nice, in grouping them better toward the ends they provide so you can ignore as wanted.

But, yo, Bryce, what about the dungeon, proper? A solid affair, gentle reader.

The maps here are ok. Visually interesting, varied, with some objects and obstacles on them, such as rubble ro crawl over. It’s not going to win any Exploration Dungeon awards, but, also, it’s not the simple garbage that plagues the hobby these days. It does have a somewhat vaguely “Realistic” look to it, in the way that hallways and rooms abut each other. There’s something … claustrophobic? about it.  Maybe it’s the doors and such. Or, more technically, the passages between rooms. Rubble blocked to crawl over, or bars to bend with the help of a winch. Levers and trapped doors. It’s got that vibe of a closed off dangerous place. 

Formatting is decent. Bullets with sharp little terse sentences to describe things. It does get a bit long in places. Or, rather, Long for DIgest. I think that had this been a traditional 8.5×11 then the formatting would have worked better with the occasional burst of longer text. The sad devotion to that ancient digest religion has not helped you conjure up the most cognitively accessible data tapes. I can also more than quibble with the amount of text in the “front appendix” required to run the dungeon well. And, there’s the occasional mistake, like a mirror rooms with stats for things you see in the mirror … which I guess means you can step through it? Maybe I missed something. But, whatever. You can definitely run it. And the descriptions are at least Bryce Average in their ability to conjure a good room image. That beats 90% of the shit out there. Combined with a decent assortment of treasure … and, maybe, I should touch on that more. There’s a decent amount of mundane treasure. I might call it of the trinket variety, and Iliked that a lot. Decently described and unique. A nice variety of coins and jewels held inside of other things to bring the more visceral description to life.

Interactivity is good here. I’ve recounted even the rubble to crawl across, or a hidden tunnel to slog through (a sewer that, miraculously, doesn’t suck. Because it’s only a couple of rooms and ruined.) Mirrors, creeping terrors, tomb robbers, and a lot of traps, both of the trappy trap kind and the room hazard kind abound. Lots of puzzle-like things and even one very classic puzzle at the end.And it’s all done without the usual gimping that goes on. Sure, shash that fucking wall down; there’s no two dozen wishes keeping you from doing it. 

I like this kind of a lot. I was all ready to hate on it, based on the cover and title. And, then, on the length of the preamble. But, the actual dungeon is a really good job of exploring an ancient tomb/catacomb. Or, rather, making you THINK you are … appearing to be historically accurate and realistic while not actually being so … and instead being actually fun. This one is getting a Best. I don’t run the LotFP variety of low-fantasy, but if I did I would absolutely be using this. It’s a better LotFP adventure than the vast majority published by LotFP. And not just because it’s a dungeon. 

This is $15.00 at DriveThru. Preview is eighteen pages and you get to see the dungeon encounters. A very good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/431258/Baphomets-Son?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews, The Best | 9 Comments

The Lost Amulet of the Lizardmen

Posted on July 1, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Tarcisio Lucas
TLHP Games
OSR
Levels 1-4 (Seriously?)

High hopes dashed again. I know, I know. I’m a dreamer.

An ancient Zigurat hidden in the midst of a distant Swamp. A lost civilization of lizardmen, long gone. A mystical amulet with arcane powers. A mysterious stranger in a Tavern.

A 43 page dungeon with six rooms taking up six pages. With garbage room descriptions. This is what my life has become.

It’s hard, really, to describe just how bad some of these adventures are. And yet, this is the task before me. 

The format here is digest, I think? Or maybe full page. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, I guess. Each page is, essentially, a full color illustration. In full dazzling colours. And on each a bright yellow scroll with the next of the adventure. This combination, alone, makes the test hard to read,. The eye is distracted by the BLAZING gaudy colours. No bolding. No real effort at formatting or organization beyond this. The monsters and hazards are just mixed up in this text with no effort to call them out. It is the definition of cognitively difficult to absorb.

I believe that the purpose of an adventure is to assist the DM in running it. It is therefore the job of the designer to help bring the adventure to life, to provide the DM with a little snippet that helps them run the thing, bringing it to life in the DMs head so they can riff off of it and run t he encounter well. To do this, this adventure provides, at times, a little footnote like thing here and there. Footnotes like “For the GM: How does the figure behave? Does he speak softly? Hastily?

Does he have a distant lands accent? Is he wearing an exotic perfume? Does

he have a vulgar vocabulary?” I fucking HATE this. This is the EXACT opposite of what an adventure should be doing. This is the kind of shit you are supposed to build in to your descriptions. This is the exact sort of thing that SHOULD be provided so the DM can get a mental image and then riff on it. What he fuck is the purpose of this? Why not just say “figure out an encounter and present it ot the players. Maybe the goal is to introduce them to the adventure?” What the fuck man? Why bother even writing at all if yo’re not going to say anything concrete about something?

Oh, oh, and the traps and hazards? “Consider the most logical narrative consequences as a result of the PCs actions. Assume 1d6 damage as the standard consequence for something

going wrong.” That’s fucking wonderful. It says NOTHING. The individual encounters have NO detail about hazards. Just that little snippet. Look, I’m not the most mechanically minded DM. I love it when things are more free form. But, seriously, if you can’t describe an encounter, mechanically, in any way other than this then you’re not doing ANYTHING to assist the DM in running the adventure.

Oh, oh, how about this for one of those SIX FUCKING ROOMS that the dungeon consists of? “ they discover a hidden alcove housing a dusty tome, its pages filled with cryptic prophecies and riddles that may hold the key to the ziggurat’s mysteries.” That’s it. That’s the description of the book that holds the dungeons secrets . I’m supposed to run this fucking thing with THAT as a description? Go fuck yourself.

This is nothing. It’s a collection of ideas. I’m pretty sure it’s quite low on enemies. Maybe a giant snake in the temple and that’s it? Otherwise it’s all just “heres a list of monsters they encounter in the swamp on the way.”  Those six rooms take four pages to describe. Four pages. “The air is

thick with an otherworldly stillness, broken only by soft echoes that seem to emanate from the very walls. Intricate murals depicting ancient rituals and sacrifices adorn the chamber, their faded colors hinting at a time long past.” Thats a little purpose, but it does get an image across. Mostly ineffectually, for the amount of text. 

Fucking christ. I get that people want to play with format and shit. That’s fine. But you’ve lost track of the goal. If you need 43 pages to describe six rooms then you’ve failed. Completely. And, to have NOTHING concrete in the rooms at all? To force the DM through permutations to go find encounters and the like? Go find a page with some stats on it, somewhere. Fuck off man.

This is $6.50 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages. Go click on it and enjoy the formatting and full colour illustrations. They looks like blacklight paintings.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/441529/The-Lost-Amulet-of-the-Lizardmen–An-OSR-Adventure?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 21 Comments

Fangs in the Dark

Posted on June 28, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Ben Thompson
99c Adventures
B/x ... but really 5e.
Level 1

Look ma! An old school cover!

A daring escape from the clutches of Gnoll marauders liberates you from a life of brutal servitude, yet your struggle for survival continues…  for now you find yourself alone and unarmed, beset by unseen horrors that lie in wait at every turn, with only your wits, your courage, and your strength to sustain you.

This 64 page adventure is shit. Everything about it. Read-aloud, DM text, linear, design. All shit. 

First, it’s not a fucking PSR adventure. Putting “OSR” on the cover and including stats for B/X does not make your adventure an OSR adventure. The fucking game works differently, betweem PSR and 5e. Shit you can get away with in 5e,, like forced combat after forced combat, just does not fucking work in OSR. This is one of the reasons why linearity and plot tend to fail in OSR adventures. One of the first “scenes” is with two gnolls and two hyenas. That’s bad enough for a first fucking level party. But, then, the party has no weapons and no armor. What the fuck happened in playtesting? Oh, right, you didn’t do that.So, this is a 5e fucking adventure with the OSR label slapped on in the most shameless way in order to increase sales, I guess. Fucking bullshit money grab. I say it again. Write something because you love the game, not because you want some fucking money. 

The opening read-aloud is a page long. Read-aloud in this is routinely long. DM text is even longer, with the most basic of encounters running a page in length. Seriously. A fucking SPIDER is a page long. A NORMAL spider, not a giant one. ONE spider. A page long. It’s fucking nuts. 

“Force them to run: Some of you contemplate standing and fighting for a moment, but the overwhelming enemy response breaks your resolve and you decide to escape rather than perish.” It’s just a railroad. Moving from one scene to another. Except, during an overland journey. Then it turns random. Why? WHy then? This is certainly not the greatest of all sins that can be committed, but, if you’re writing a 5e adventure, a 5e scene adventure that is essentially a railroad, but switch to randomness then? Because you don’t understand the purpose of randomness. Just take one or three and flesh them out (to the appropriate degree) and stick them in, for a better experience. If you’re committed to a railroad plot then do a railroad plot.

It ends in the ruins of a castle. Where you meet a dragon. WHo sends you on a fetch quest under it to get a gem stolen by rats. Wererats, of course. At level one. Coming back you get to [pick an item each from its hoard. Very dragon like.

Overwritten to a point of extremes. A railroad from start to finish. This then is D&D.A suck ass review of a suck ass adventure. Is this really the vision you had when you set out to write?

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages. Enjoy the opening read-aloud mess, along with the railroad of an escape and combats.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/441326/LC1-Fangs-in-the-Dark?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 11 Comments

Ship of Fools

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Thomas Scoot Ingle
Thomas Scott Ingle Presents
LotFP
Level ?

From the Captain’s log: “Whatever profane scourge, horrid disease, foul magic, or pure evil has taken my crew, my ship, my life, it cannot be allowed to find its way ashore…!              “I pray the gods sink this vessel, and the evil infecting her to the dark deep, and Mother Ocean take us all! For now, I’ve locked myself in my cabin with my last gallon of stout liquor, contemplating further on our dark situation, for I know not what else to do. May haps lady luck will visit, and this hard liquor will cause my death…” What happens when an adventure party stumbles upon Naval war vessel, lost for years, presumed sunken? Can they figure out what happened, or will they too fall to the horrid curse that destroyed the crew…?

This 32 page adventure describes the zombie apocalypse that is taking place on a boat. Designer Fiat combines with a mixed up DM text/read-aloud and Looooooooonnnnngggggg text runs to create one of the more confusing messes i’ve stumbled across in my ten years. Ok idea. Some decent imagery here and there. But a fucking mess.

You find a ship aground on the beach. You go on to it. Eventually the zombies wake up and attack you … after the ship has drifted back out to sea. Fight hordes of zombies. 

I enjoy a good monster description. I think they help bring an adventure to life. “It’s a zombie” is boring. That could mean anything. I like a monster description that draws no conclusions, like “Zombie” and instead describes what you see, or sense. This is part of what helps keep the game from becoming stale. A good monster description keeps the wonder of D&D alive. “It’s an orc” *YAWN* “It’s a svelt oiled human, nude but for a loincloth, sporting the head of a pig.” NOICE! This does a thing or two with monster descriptions that I particularly enjoy. “[The bodies on the deck] are rotted to the point it looks like one would need a spatula to get them up. Or a flat shovel. Some of them have thin layers of mineral growths on their bones from repeated exposure to sea spray.” That’s pretty sweet, eh? That’s a description from before they get up to attack. Hours before they do that. And, it turns something that the party is used to getting gacked by, a dead body, in to something that seems inoffensive to them. They are not as much on guard. I’m always impressed when someone manages to describe a skeleton in a room in a way that I, as a player, would not immediately destroy it for fear of it coming alive. And don’t get me started on statues …  Anyway, good zombie/body description in this one.

But the rest of this is terrible to a degree I don’t usually see in the adventures I review. 

Read-aloud! Second person read-aloud! Oh, my favorite! “The salty spray of the sea kisses your faces, the icy wind freezing it, as you trek along, near the coastline.” And the fucking adventure is FULL of it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many second-person descriptions in any adventure before this. It is, of course, purple, because otherwise why the fuck does someone use second person. And, even better, it’s mixed in with the DM text. Like, it will have a second-person read-aloudish thing and then immediately launch in to the DM text. There’s absolutely no indication, at all, where one stops and the next begins. You’ll be in a second-person description and then encounter “It only appears someone’s waving from the crow’s nest, but one can’t tell, until they climb up for a firsthand look, which requires boarding the vessel.” It’s absolutely insane. Switching, back and forth, with little rhyme or reason. 

Did I mention the descriptions are LOOOONGGGG? Like, at least a column, and those are few and far between. We’re looking at page long descriptions here. Page a half in some cases. How the fuck are you supposed to run a page a half description of room, with no formatting other than a paragraph break. Yup, it’s paragraph style. Not quite wall of text, more novelization. 

If you try to get off the ship you get eaten. Yup. Designer fiat. If you notice the ship drifting out to sea and try to jump off then your character is immediately eaten. That’s wonderful. Play the fucking adventure the way the dude wants you to or fuck you. 

The artifact on board, causing the dead to rise (classic bite zombie infection style) is located “[at] Referee/Gm’s choice”. Great. And the zombies, proper? How about a headshot?! “their headless body will still attack, though at a Referee/Gm determined penalty.” It’s the fucking designers job to handle this shit. It’s their job to come up with that penalty and describe it and playtest it and make sure it fucking works. That’s part of what the fuck I’m paying for (in time, if not money) when I get an adventure. But, no. 

And, let’s talk about the dead rising. A lot of the rooms, especially the initial ones, have a percentage chance that a certain action, most something causing noise, will cause the dead to rise. But, the party doesn’t know this. They will continue from room to room, causing noise, not knowing that this will trigger the undead attack.; There is no tension here. If the party doesn’t KNOW they are taking a chance then there is no tension around that chance. Sure, you can just attach a percentage for the undead waking up in each room. But let us not kid ourselves that is anything more than pure randomness. Why not just roll ahead of time, when writing the adventure, and making the zombies rise in that room, as you are writing it? It has the same effect.

Badly designed. Badly formatted. Impossible to wade through the text. It’s got nothing. But, also, the rare Two out of Ten!

This is $5.50 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages. The last two show a couple of the shorter rooms descriptions, up front. So, only a column or so. But, illustrates the other points well. SO, A good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/439894/Ship-of-Fools?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 6 Comments