tenfootpole.org

By Ben Thompson
99c Adventures
OSR ... and 5e ...
Level 3

Deep in the unforgiving bayous of Chaumont, a weathered journal found among the bones of a long-forgotten officer hints at solving a tantalizing, decades-old mystery — the final fate of the notorious Bloodsail Rovers. The lost treasure of these cruel pirates was rumored to be immense… but perhaps some ghosts are best left undisturbed. Twenty years ago, a vicious group of pirates known as the Bloodsail Rovers terrorized the coasts and inlets of the Kingdom of Chaumont. Under the command of the fearsome Captain Jacques de la Rouge Beausoleil, these pirates earned their fame with the daring capture of the royal galleon Navarette, which at the time was carrying a huge payload of gold and gems from the Frontierlands… as well as a mysterious artifact imbued with powerful dark magic. The Bloodsail Rovers disappeared from history not long after capturing the Navarette, and were never heard from again. No coins from the galleon’s treasure hold were ever recovered, leading to wild speculations ranging from deadly sea monster attacks to buried treasure hoards on remote desert islands. Perhaps there was no Navarette at all, and the entire thing was just an old fisherman’s tale, made up to fill childrens’ imaginations with dreams of fantastical wealth. Our heroes are about to discover the truth.

His 62 page adventure features a ruined swamp fort with nineteen rooms. Long italics, overwritten DM text. First person narrative. Mary Sue. It’s all in here, waiting for you. To mourn the death of modern world. Down progress and up the wild tyrannies of barbarism!

Ohs Nos! Pirates! Better go get em! Or, maybe, you find a coin from a long lost pirate treasure. Anyway, you travel through the swamp to a little town. Inside you pick up Mary Sue and go to an abandoned fort five days away. Grrr! Bugbear pirates! Better kill em! Ohs Nos! Then a pirate skeleton comes to life and attacks! Yeah! Adventure! 

This resembles the late 1e and 2e era, with massive amounts of DMs text and a loose plot line to hang shit off of. As you travel towards the swamp town you see a rowboat sailoverhead, full of skeletons. Turns out there’s a necromancer and a swamp giant fighting in the swamp up ahead, on the way to the town. I guess he lives, like, 80 feet from the town? There’s no scale on the map. Anyway, whatever, there are eight or so encounters on the way to the town, the majority somehow related to this necromancer/giant fight. No doubt because “a rowboat in the sky full of skeletons!” would be cool. 

Inside the town you get attacked by the local tough. Your group of level threes is attacked by the local tough. Your group of level threes.  It is at this point that the text reminds the DM to remind the players that killing people in the streets is illegal in this town. Uh huh. In a dark alley. Behind the inn. With that being the only real building in town. Uh huh. Don’t worry though, the Mary Sue show sup to save you. A LONG text block describes the bard in the inn and how everyone masturbates over him. He’s a level six illusionist. A level six. Hanging out in the inn. SInging like a bard. Saving your ass. And ready to join your party! So, yeah, the Mary Sue is coming along! How fun for all the players! 

The text, both the read-aloud AND the DM text, are in first person. “You pick your way through the swamp …” or “He’s the leader of the group that’s going to try and beat you up in section 2-2 …” or “He tells you that the guild …” This is so fucking basic, in terms of adventure writing, that it is beyond me how it still shows up in 2023. Oh, the read-aloud. The LONG read-aloud. That no one will pay attention to. That is in italics, so it’s hard to fucking read. That’s full of “it appears to be” padded out shit. And that goes for the DM text also. Full of appears to be. And long. LOoooooonnngggggg. Like, two pages for a simple encounter long. “What appears to be a lone man … You mean, a lone man?

You want some XP? How about 750gp worth of it. That’s your loot.

This thing is just garbage, front to back. 63 pages for twenty encounters in the dungeon. Fucking christ. It amazes me that people do this shit. Put together a whole adventure. Manage to get it all down on paper. Make it look like one of those fancy pants formats and even stick some fucking art in it. But there is no attempt to actually figure out how to do it well. How to avoid the most common mistakes. It’s the same shit now for forty fucking years. Pople thinking this is how you do it. 

This is $1 at DriveThru. You get to see the first seven pages, which includes the first few wilderness encounters on the way to the town. So, you do get to see the quality of the writing. Good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/456847/LC2-Dead-Mans-Bounty?1892600

By Andrew Walter
Forgotten Oubliette of Forgetfulness
OSR
Levels 2-3

Run the Gantlet of Farradok! Imprisoned by a sadistic fire giant and stripped of their weapons and equipment, the adventuring party must escape from the fiery labyrinths beneath his court – but it won’t be easy. His three evil champions and retinue of hobgoblins have also joined the game…

This 43 page adventure presents a dungeon with two levels and about forty rooms. It’s one of thos e”you’ve been captured and stripped of your shit and have to escape” dungeons, with the usual puzzles, traps, and forced combats. And no treasure. Or decent formatting. Or evocative descriptions of any type. Enjoy!

Have I already done the camping thing? Whatever … if I come to you and say we’re going camping this weekend, what do you think of? Are we backpacking in? Are we parking the RV in the  middle of a football field lot and watching grandkids bike with 600 members of the family? Hanging out with a bunch of college kids around a fire getting drunk? Driving off down a forest road to a secluded spot to pitch a tent? Once of those definitions is valid for a lot of different people. Three’s no right answer, just as there’s no one true way to play and enjoy D&D. Which is a mighty suspicious way to open a D&D adventure review …

Good thing I control the narrative then, isn’t it? I mean, I’m the one buying this garbage and taking the time out to look at it and then write about it. And, fortunately for my sanity, I have standards and know which fucking definition is “correct.” The adventure, in the introduction, proudly proclaims that it “rejects imagined product and design ‘standards’” Wunderbar! I’m down for this shit! Smash the patriarchy! It’s 2023! Let’s push the boundaries of what we can do, examine the base assumptions we make about D&D adventures, modernize it while keeping the core of what makes them the magic that they are! We choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard! Oh, wait .. it’s used here as an excuse to not try at all …

You’ve been captured by a fire giant and his 120 hobgoblin minions. You’re stripped of your weapons, armor, and gear and dropped down in the dungeon to escape. There are three champions that chase you, all Running Man without Richard Dawson or the RUnning Man Home Game. A bunch of forced combats at level two, how nice! And, the adventure also notes, with perhaps some pride, that there is little to no treasure … the reward is getting out alive. Forced combats and no treasure for leveling … I wonder if we are really playing OD&D? It is not an OD&D experience, that’s for sure. The bad old days of killer DM’s and killer dungeons. Worry not though, you get to the roll on the “Hobgoblin Punishment table, so, also, you can start with 2/3hp! Or any of a host of other further gimps. DId I mention that the dungeon is slammed full of 2HD creatures? And 3HD creatures? And a smattering of 5HD creatures? And you without gear, weapons, or armor, tsk tsk tsk …

You are charged with “Find the blue key to escape!” Seriously. Find the blue key. Once you do find it and get back to the exit gate you get to answer a riddle and each time you answer wrong someone else gets turned to stone. Did I mention the LARGE number of insta-death shit in this? The fickle hand of fate is in full force in this one!

The adventure is El Senor Grimtooth forward. Witness: “As soon as the Blue Key is placed in the lock, a magical force yanks it out before it can be turned and flings it into the hole in the ceiling. The door by which the party entered slams shut and locks, and the holes in the walls begin filling the room with scalding water.” Doors slamming shut are always the sign of quality. There’s no real puzzle here. You just get to figure out how to open the locked doors. 

And thus it goes. Wander from room to room. Face a Grimtooth puzzle/trap. Engage in a forced combat. Have a wanderer roll every turn. 

Evocative descriptions are essentially nonexistent, being maybe a word or two of description at most. “Warm foetid water flows at a swift pace” That’s it. The formatting is VERY double-spaced. There is A LOT of white space between sections of text. So much so that it is hard to follow. (I have this fucking fight at work at all the time; the devs LUV putting in WIDE line breaks, and don’t seem to notice the cognitive dissonance this causes by breaking a grouping effect. Prob because they are clueless to the information that is being grouped.)  Weird bolding of shit is everywhere. I’m sure there must be some reason to it, but I can’t tell. Room numbers? Monsters? Secret doors? Equipment? I don’t know what else.

Anyway, yet another deathtrap dungeon, this one a challenge, with an escape the dungeon without shit motif. 

This is $2.50 at DriveThru. You get the entire thing as a preview, so, very good preview! Well done! At least there’s a foundation to build on …

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/456846/The-Scorching-Gantlet-UD1?1892600

By Malcolm Harbrow
Self Published
Call of Cthulhu

Howard Elbridge, a writer of weird fiction, has disappeared. Looking into his disappearance, the investigators will uncover his links to Miskatonic University’s “daring” set, and the history of a mysterious painting.

This 22 page investigation is … the usual Call of Cthulhu stuff? The usual adventure with the usual wordiness and lack of care in usability. Yeah? 

We haven’t check in on the big boy for awhile. Let’s see what he’s up to! Here’s one that is, quote “a Refreshingly different mystery… Excellent low-key investigation with a claustrophobic feel” according to another review site, as quoted by the product blurb on DriveThru. I’m sure the marketing is correct. It must be, right?! Off we go!

We’ve got a nice timeline, along with when recent newspaper stories appear. That’s good! And a nice selection of handouts. I always appreciate handouts in adventures. More adventure, D&D or no, should include them. They’re fun. Soak them in tea and burn the edges! The main plot is … fine, I guess? People get trapped in a painting. If you stare at it long enough them you can get trapped also. Or, maybe, swap places with someone in it. There’s a line or two in the adventure which does a good job conveying a wolf-like creature chasing people in a maze. Indistinct, eerie, a nice little job of conveying that. That is, alas, the last  nice thing I have to say.

This is the usual Call of Cthulhu mess of an adventure. Everything done in paragraph form and just tossed in willy nilly. Repetition beyond belief. “As noted above (in “first impressions of the painting”), the painting is striking and disturbing, depicting a number of tiny yet terrified human figures fleeing through some sort of angular labyrinth, pursued by the shadowy impression of a wolf — or maybe a wolflike beast?” That description must be repeated about eight times int he adventure. I get it, man. I get it. Everything is just tossed in. The painting, murders, newspaper offices, breaking, a faux secret society and pi … it’s just all THERE, in their own sections. So, eventually, you get to a section heading for the secret society, or onefor the pi. These are nearly the last pages of the adventure. There’s absolutely no attempt to integrate things in to the adventure, to make it a cohesive whole. I can’t imagine the amount of page flipping required to run this. What’s the PI doing now? How about sticking it in the main text with some suggestions? Or, you can just say there’s a gruff PI and let the DM do everything else … as the adventure does. 

Seriously, it’s the designers job to assist the DM in running the adventure. I don’t HAVE to do what you tell me, but, also, its up to you, as the designer, to stick something in that I CAN use if I so desire. Give me something to work with! This is all abstracted ideas.
They might show at the apartment and ask questions” Well then have he two fuckers do that in the text for the apartment. Fucking Christ man.

And, of course, it’s the classic Call of Cthulhu “just write a paragraph” style. No use of whitespace or bullets or bolding or anything else to help call attentinto things and/or make the judges life easier when running the adventure at the table. Just write a paragraph and hoe someone printed this out and used a highlighter, I guess. There’s offset boxes to describe people, but, really, its all the same information that is also presented in the main text of the product. “If persuasion fails, they could try their luck with Hans Trager, Schneider’s underpaid assistant.” Well maybe tell us about him when you’re describing the shop, not at the very end of the description when we’re talking about success rolls? Jesus. Have you never set a scene? Have you never Run a Cthulhu adventure before? Do you think somehow that this mindless vomiting of text is somehow conducive to running things.

The adventure, proper, is pretty straightforward. Once you get in to his house, which is pretty immediate, you see the painting and his journal and its immediately obvious what is going on. It’s gonna take seven days, in the presence of the painting, for anything interesting to happen. This seems like a loooooonnnngggg time, given the depth, or lack thereof, of the investigation. This doesn’t seem to me like it will work.

Worry not, OSR crowd, Just about everything ever produced by the OSR at this than every Call of Cthulhu adventure ever made. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. Your four page preview shows you nothing of the adventure, making it impossible to judge ot before buying it, which is the purpose of a preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/417454/The-Wolf-in-the-Labyrinth?1892600

By Bill Barsh
Pacesetter Games & Simulations
1e
Level 1

A ship lies in the frozen tundra of the far north. Its history is lost in time, but its future may spell doom for unwary adventurers.

Fourteen rooms over a three level ship over four and a half pages. It’s a shipwreck in the middle of the frozen tundra of Lambeau. Not an abundance of text, or an abundance of interesting. It’s a throwback to the early days of the OSR.

Why your level ones are out and about in the frozen tundras, blizzards, and glaciers is not mentioned. And while I’m usually ok with some hand waving, if you’re writing an adventure in SHerwood featuring Robin Hood then it might take just a wee bit more the designer to help the DM fit the adventure in to the parties lives. But, anyway, you’re in the far north and you see a full on ship, in the tundra and snow, down in a valley. Being good little adventurers, you go investigate. There’s nothing really to keep you on the ship, except … there’s this white raven cawing loudly when you get in to room one, the main deck. If you kill it then a witch shows up and makes you go get some spider eggs from below in penance. No stats for the witch; we’re referred to another Pacesetter adventure for more information. Other than that, I might hack apart the deck of the ship to kill shit from above or burn the ship down and loot stuff later. You’re not gonna get rich here; maybe 1500gp in cash/goods. But, also, a nontrivial amount of magic. +1 armors and weapons. And a bow that fires a 3d6 fire arrow once a turn! And a ring that does a 4d6  ice storm! I’m no stranger to powerful magic at level one, running a campaign once where I gave four copies of every magic item in the 1e DMG in session one. But that was the point of that game; I’m not sure about this one. 

Barsh keeps his read-aloud pretty simple. “While most of the floor of the room is covered with ice, a pile of ballast stones rises to form a small mound near the north wall.” This is a theme throughout the adventure: pretty lackluster descriptions. There’s not much here to inspire. Time and again that is seen in the descriptions, both in the read-aloud and in the DM text. That extends to the interactivity in the adventure. There’s just very little going on here except stabbing the next room of monsters. There IS a healing hot spring … in the very last room. I’m just gonna need more, even at level one, than moving from room to room and stabbing monsters. Yes, that’s right, I said it, Icewind Dale WAS much poorer than Baldur’s Gate. 

The read-aloud, when it does go in to detail, engages in over reveal. A core element of D&D should be the back and forth between the players and the DM. The characters investigate, they ask questions of the DM and the DM describes something back to them. The longer read-alouds here reveal too much about an scene, thus destroying that critical back and forth game play element. Instead of telling us that an elf is slumped over, wearing tattered chainmail and wiedling x, y, and z, instead tell us of a body slumped, or a warrior slumped. Use the word budget to do better than slumped and warrior, though. Then, in the DM text, provide the DM the information so that when the players investigate they see more. We’re not trying to be obtuse, we’re instead spending our verbosity budget wisely. 

And then, there are the bits of DM text that over explain and pad out things with backstory. “The tundra orc chief calls this room his lair during the hunting trip. This orc is old and missing one eye. He knows the area and has hunted around the ship his entire life. He lets the younger orcs perform the hunting duties while he directs and plans the operations.” Fifty words. Eight of which are relevant to running this encounter. Prune it back and focus on the environment, the interactivity, evocative descriptions … things useful AT THE TABLE. This emphasis on background data is irrelevant, gets in the way of scanning and running the text, and could be used to make the adventure actually interesting.

I’d say all we’re missing is an “appears to be … “in the adventure but that’s present also.

Low loot. Low interactivity. Non-evocative text. Padded out text. And, yet, Barsh keeps the text tight, leaning toward minimalism, meaning that he’s still writing better adventures than most 

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages and you get to see almost half the rooms. Good preview for checking out the text quality.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/432773/The-Raven-and-the-Lone-Star?1892600

Lindsey Bonnette
Self Published
Generic/Universal
Level: 1?

A necromancer grows in power each day within their lair. Undead minions harass travelers and lurk at the edge of the village. Thanks to a magical artifact, the necromancer’s plans are expanding beyond raising the dead, and the forest will never be the same.

Fourteen pages of non stop excitement featuring an opossum necromancer in a magic hat! Marvel at the evocative descriptions and the clarity of writing! New design techniques bring forth endless possabilities!

This adventure, in the generic/universal category on DriveThru, has Signposts instead of lead-in encounters! And is not actually an adventure. It’s a Collection! And, before I get too cynical, I applaud the attempt to find some kind of meaning in the plot based adventure structure of the modern era. We don’t know what we don’t know, and it seems logical to imagine that there are better structures for conducting modern-era type adventures than the ones created for the more fun and fulfilling exploratory adventures from the beginnings of the hobby. Certainly, understanding “there is a plot” and trying to fit the adventure to that base assumption would fall in to line with one of the core tenants of the tenfootpole: we handle structure according to the specific needs of the adventure at that time. IE: we seldom need room/key for the village. And thus we’re open to experimentation and new types of things in order to fulfill the “promise” of these new adventure types. And thus Signposts, as clues and lead-ins to the main adventure locale. The whole “collection” thing seems dumb as fuck to me, in contrast with the concept of signposts, but, whatever. Language changes over time and words mean what we decide they mean right now. 

But they gotta work. Do they work here? I don’t know; I was too distracted by how shitty this thing was. 

The signposts are supposed to be things that kind of point you at the main adventure locale, the farmhouse. We get two tables for these: inside town and outside of town. The inside town table is, essentially, just a rumour table. People have gone missing in the forest. Walking skeletons sighted in the forest. Attacks .. throughout the forest. Get it?  Off to the forest you go. Blood trail leading to the farmhouse. Crows flying in the direction of the farmhouse. You ge the idea. The wilderness table  is 2d6, full of “none” entries and two monster attacks, alongside the “signposts.” I don’t know. I guess you just roll on it until you are bored and/or the party go to the farmhouse/get to that entry? 

It is, however, the entries themselves that are shitty. “Missing Persons: Travelers through the forest have gone missing, and people in town are talking about missing friends, relatives, and goods.” This is what passes for an encounter in this. For a signpost. “Hey, something could, you know, maybe happen that is somehow related to a missing person.” This is a shitty encounter. In fact, it’s NOT an encounter. I’m not even sure it’s an idea for an encounter, but we’ll get it the benefit of the doubt and say it is. You don’t get fucking paid to come up with ideas. You get fucking paid to put them down in a manner that helps the DM at the table. This means taking something generic and abstract and turning it in to something specific. Who, what , when, where, how, to steal from someone else. Bessy was afixinn to meander over to Ma Barkers with some blackberries yon morning. We found her basket and some blackberry stains over by the forest near where the crick meets that old stump where Eustice cut off his foot. You know, back in ‘63?” Give the fucking thing some fucking life. THATS what you’re fucking getting paid for. 

And all of the signposts are like that. Just abstracted garbage.  

Then we get to the adventure locale, the farmhouse. A few locations, maybe five? And they have page long descriptions Yeah! Who doesnt love fucking wading through a page long description with a fucking highlighter in order to be able to run an adventure. Worry not, though, folks, they’ve put a summary at the end of each description. I get the concept, but it’s done in a shitty manner, not really relevent to the room or running it. You can put a summary in, but then you need to reference back to the main text, with it, to make it a meaningful summary. Like, with bolding and such, so I can find things in the main text. 

Of course, it’s padded out. “The main room of the farmhouse acts as a study” DOn’t do this. Just describe a mainroom that is a study. The designer kind of does this, but that first sentence is padding. Or “This is Vesims corpse” Nope, again, stop telling up what you are about to do. Just do it. “This is Vesim’s corpse. Ophelia and her minions leave small gifts, bones and candles, for the corpse in return for the knowledge that Sage provides.” Excellent worldbuilding! But we don’t need to know WHY they do it. Just tellus what the room looks the fuck like. Like, what the gifts are. Stop abstracting, be specific, and do it in almost he same number of words … after cutting the padding out.

The main thing going on here is the magic hat. It’s turned the villain in to a necromancer! Except, when you get ahold of the hat is just gives you a +1 to magic skill checks. Lame. LAME! It gave necromancer powers to someone and yet, now, I’m getting a +1 to my skill check:?? Fuck your magic item gimping!

And, of course, the main villain is an opossum, who accidentally put on the hat and got sentient and named herself Ohpelia. We are supportive here, friends, of people playing D&D in different ways. Bunnies & Burrows was, I believe, a very early game. 1976 says rpggeek. We just don’t play D&D that way. But, also, they also deserve good adventures. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $5. There ain’t no preview, sucker! But you can get it for free since it’s PWYW.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/447568/A-Opossums-Hat?1892600

By Godmaker
Monthly Adventures
Generic/Universal
Level: ?

The us hope the publisher name is just poetic license, and not a threat to publish monthly …

In a small village of Lightwood there was a disaster. In the forest nearby a troll has settled. The PCs got to the village by accident, wishing to shorten the way. The villagers turn to PCs for help. This adventure seems like a simple monster slaying, but soon it turns into a detective story where the characters have to figure out why and who is behind The Mad Troll.

This 31 page digest adventure is a railroad plot. More boring than painful, at least for the players. For the DM it is drudgery. Enjoy your game of the majestic wonder of the imagination. 

Ok, gird your fucking loins. Here we go. Marky got with Sharon, who got Charese. Oh, wait, no. I mean … There’s this little demon. He figures out that in a temple under a village is an artifact that powers up demons. But demons can’t retrieve it. So, he hires a thief from the big city to steal it for him. But, the thief wants a lot of money. So he finds a troll and charms him in to attacking caravans, to get the money he needs to pay the thief. That convoluted piece of shit story is out background. As far as the adventure … The headman explains that a troll is attacking caravans in the nearby forest. He tells the party to go to the inn to stay the night. The innkeeper tells the party to go to the blacksmith for weapons and armor, and the party gets hired by a merchant in the inn to go get his papers from a wagon that the troll attacked. At the wagon the trolls attacks. This is a plot adventure so we get the advice of “Also, make sure that the PCs do not kill the troll in this episode, giving it a chance to escape in case of danger.” Perfection personified! The party has no control over the adventure. Perfect. Just what I wanted this morning. It’s a plot adventure, I know. It just amazes me that, in 2023, people still think that this railroad shit is ok. I mean, the entire adventure is a railroad, but, specifically, the escaping villain thing? What the fuck man?

Ok, party flees from the troll. In town the priest advises the party to seek out the witch in the woods; maybe she can help. Nevermind using logic here. Priests and witches have always gotten along. At the witch she charges 5gp for some powder to cure the trolls madness. Back in town, the party is arrested. The headmaster accuses them of stealing the towns gold from his house while they were away. The party is stripped of shit, tied up, and forced to investigate. Somehow they convince the headman that it wasn’t them. Then the thief, in disguise, tells the party he knows where the trolls cave is. There they kill the troll and/or demon. Adventure over.

It’s a plot adventure. Plot adventures suck ass. I’m sure there’s a good one somewhere; the exception to the rule. But this one isn’t it. Make sure the troll escapes. The party is arrested. All of this garbage for the same of the plot. Fuck you man, fuck you. The smith has Battle Acid in his shop. I guess that’s fantasy shit. 

The entire thing is in long paragraph form with absolutely no formatting beyond a paragraph break here and there. It’s a fucking nightmare to find anything. And the locations get described, then the people, then the plot. I’m sure this is for the dm’s benefit, but fuck me if its not a pain in the ass. Triple flipping between the plot, the location, and the NPC to figure out what is going on somewhere. 

There’s exactly one interesting line of description in the entire 31 pages: “On the ground near the front of the wagon is a stinking puddle of blood with a swarm of flies circling over it – all that remains of the horse.” That’s it. Nothing else is ever described well. Or, actually, described at all in most cases. It’s just page after page of text that describes text and backstory and is padded out to hell and bacl with no actual impact on the adventure. 

The thif from the big city? He keeps his horse, in the inns barn, saddled at all times. I suggest killing any NPC you meet who does that. It will simplify your life, as an adventurer, greatly.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $0. That’s too much to sell the precious moments of your life for. Maybe watch the grass grow instead. Or stare up at the stars. Or stare up at starlink. All far, far better uses of your time than this. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/455161/The-Mad-Troll?1892600

By Steve Johnson
Hex Games
OSE
Levels 3-7

Embark on a journey to the ancient and mysterious Temple of Yargolith, where forbidden knowledge and dark powers reside. Brave treacherous ruins and face off against deadly cultists as you uncover the secrets of the temple and confront agents of the powerful entity known as Yargolith. Beware, for those who dare to enter the Blasphemous Temple may never return.

This 114 page digest adventure contains a small village, a hex crawl, and a multilevel dungeon with about sixty rooms. It’s an assault on a cultist castle, and once they get wind of you then you’ve got about twelve turns before they finish sacrificing everyone and their god shows up. Good luck, Hackey McHackface!

Some chick hires you to go find her friend and her adventuring companions. They are off in some village in a jungle somewhere. You go there and find out they were there, disappeared in the jungle, and, oh yeah, that castle up on the mountain that glows red with the demon skull face on front is over there that direction also. Approaching it, they probably see you and start their mass blood sacrifice and twelve turns later their god shows up, all 50 foot tall and rampaging, if you don’t stop the sacrifice. I’ve got two general problems with the setup and flow of the adventure.

First, you’re hired. I know I’m not going to change anyones mind here, but I need to say it anyway: hiring is boring. This is akin to a quest giver in a crpg. “Collect 50 griffon wings and I’ll give you a pony!” It lacks motivation, and, more importantly, I think it removes a great deal of player agency and investment. Second, there is the issue of the alarm. Basically, you’re not even sure the adventurers you’re here to rescue are IN the fortress. And the fortress is pretty well run, so, they are gonna be pulling the fire alarm if they think they need to. And once they do then their god is popping off in twelve turns. So, you don’t REALLY know you’re on a timer and that timer is on a pretty hair trigger, as far as these things go. The parties only real chance here is to come in via the saves underneath everything, which is in a different hex (and, I think, non-trivial to discover) and then get up in the dungeons, first, and fuck with the cult gods tomb. In both this scenario, and in the frontal visit or “sneak in over the backside”, you’re playing the standard adventurer assault game: sneak/bluff until caught and then hack everything. I’m not morally opposed to any of this. It’s a hack and D&D has hacks. I think my problem with it is the lack of support for the obvious happening. Telegraphing the cults intentions a little more would go a long way to telling the party that they are, or will be, on a timer. Timers are fine, as long as you can figure out you’re on one. And I don’t think you can do that here. 

Order of battle for the alarm, is contained in the various rooms. There is a little section about “on alarm” or “at night” or “during the doomsday ritual” that changes up the room a bit. And then this is supported by a three page (!) timeline that covers those twelve turns between pulling the fire alarm and the god showing up. The in-room data is generally ok. It does have tendency to note the occupants of the room instead of the impacts of the room. If you are pouring oil on the front gate then it’s the oil pouring room that gets the detail and not the gate. This is always wrong. You need to know whats going on at the gate IN the gate description. But, the general concept it fine. It’s not overdone, doesn’t show up for each room, and is generally only used where needed, as it should be. The timeline, though, is a disaster. I mean, great in concept but poor in execution. “Frank and the guards start their search of the third floor” is not exactly an easy thing to run. You have to backtrack through the timeline to find things. If you end up on the third floor on turn eight, did Frank start his search there on turn to and is still there? Quick, go scan every entry before the current time! This could have been handled much better. It feels more cinematic than useful.

The layout and font are clear, with boxes used when need be. Bullets are used. Although … there is something going on with the line spacing or justification or something. It all kind of runs together. The bolding, italics and so forth, when they show up, don’t really contribute to comprehension. Your eyes glaze over. There’s just too many words, too many sentences, for each section. We’re talking a page or half page devoted to some simple concepts. The text overexplains, justifies things, and engages in padding … with if/then padding being particularly common. II’m absolutely certain the editing and layout on this were pretty good. It shows. It’s consistent and, as I said, there are parts of it that are easy on the eyes. But, unfortunately, no one told them what to shoot for. And, given that, they didn’t put something together here in layout and editing that  made the adventure easy to run at the table. Easy to scan. Easy to pull information out of. 

They kind of know this. They give you, for the may NPCs present, a little thing like “Dame Judy Dench” to run an NPC with. Of course then they also give you “Miranda Cimber, the party’s sorceress and the scion of a moderately powerful noble family in the north. She became an adventurer after fleeing her homeland to avoid an arranged marriage. Although she rarely wears it, Miranda is known to carry a brooch inlaid with her family crest, a swan on a rose background.” All of this is trivia and none of it is useful. You do not find her brooch. It’s just trivia, not gameable. And while we don’t need to go 100% in this direction, and I’m not even certain I know where the line is, I do know that when the preponderance is trivia then there’s a problem. This detracts from comprehension. This isn’t a game world you’re building. You’re building something for me to run at the table. EVERYTHING must be seen in that context. 

Take this: “This is the communal space where the cultists gather to eat and socialize. The well is just a normal well with a short retaining wall, a roof above the shaft, and a few buckets attached to ropes for use in drawing up water. There are typically 2d4 cultists loafing and gossipping here.” Little of this is usable. Instead, describe the 2d4 cultists that are loafing and gossiping. Frank is staying down, his tentacle robes hiked up to his knee, mouthing off Subaltern Keltern because he was caught eating after 6pm. Some shit like that.  Show, don’t tell. And don’t give us the room purpose, tec. SHOW it to us. 

Yeah, I could go on and on and on. It’s not the worse thing ever written. It’s not a rip off product. It’s just not a particularly good implementation of something to be run at the table. There is little evocative text, very little showing, and a lot of padding and such. It’s not oriented toward the type of play that is to be expected: a stealth before the alarm hack. Nice try QAGS. AT least I’ve still got from ramed QAGS character sheet from ORIGINS.

This is $15 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. There should always be a preview that shows you some of the relevant text so you can make an intelligent purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/454648/The-Blasphemous-Temple-of-Yargolith?1892600

By Vance Atkins
Leicester's Rambles
OSR
Level: Various?

Welcome to Goldrun’s Grotto, a cave complex out in the wild lands. The complex was originally developed in honor of Zaliel, an out-of-favor minor god of woodlands and rain, with an open-air grotto filled with trees and a hidden shrine in the caverns. Over the years, the complex has been claimed and reclaimed by numerous occupants.

This ten page adventure presents five different interpretations of the same ten room cave map. It would have been FAR better to have done one, well.Cause these are minimal junk.

Five versions of keying the same cave map. “Various Levels” says the intro, but none of the dungeons give any guidance on that. They all starts with a five entry rumour table and then move on the dungeon keys, ten of them, that generally fit about seven or eight to a page. The titles are all “the one with the snail” and “the one with a lot of skeletons”, so, enjoy that. And, to be clear, this isn’t five versions of the same map throughout time. There’s no How To Build A Dungeon thing here. It’s just five different keys for the same map. An evolution, through time, could have been interesting, either as a standalone or as a time travel adventure. There have been a couple of those so far, but none, if I recall correctly, that really stood out. Instead we just get five half-hearted attempts at a dungeon.

None of these dungeons are going to be very interesting. While the room entries DO tend to have something interesting in them, the writing is just not solid enough to hold up a nten ine room dungeon. “A pair of giant crayfish lurk” or “Warning glyphs are etched in to the cavern wall, indicating poison” are the general extent of the room descriptions. This is nowhere near the degree of evocative writing I’m looking for in an adventure. There’s no indication of the room, or passage, and what it FEELS like. There are, here and there, things that are a little more interesting. “Lantern Pool: The chimney of Bretha’s Lamp (Area #5) lies in the muddy bottom of the pool, faintly glowing. If a character enters the pool without holding the body of the lantern, the water solidifies to a glass-like consistency, “freezing” the person in place.” The imagery of a pool of water with a faint glow in the bottom is relatively nice, and a classic. The interactivity here, freezing someone in place, is interesting as well, and its handled, mechanically, just with what you see and a note indicating that dispel magic will work. But, no, “A beehive sits at the south end of the grotto. The bees have absorbed some beneficial energies from the old shrine and its trees” is what we can expect, time and again from this. I note, also, the effort at explaining what is going on in the room, in the beehive example. This is not uncommon in this adventure, and totally unneeded.

There are other minor things. The entrance is noted as area two, when its actually area one. The pools of water are described as being between knee deep and waist deep … a decent difference, and it’s handled by one sentence at the start instead of noting it in each room. The lack of that detail, or not caring about it, harkens back to those very minimal, if nonexistent, room descriptions and lack of interest in providing an environment to adventure in. A mighty sin.

One dungeon, putting all of ones effort in to it, would have worked out better. As if, this is just another novelty product.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. The preview is six pages. You get to see the first two dungeons (!), so, good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/455013/Five-Visits-to-Goldruns-Grotto?1892600