A Sample Dungeon

Posted on September 23, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
Billman
Novis Ludis
OSE
Levels 2-3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Slug House

Posted on September 21, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Daniel Herz
Stromberg Press
B/X
Levels 1-3

“Thou shalt drink one too many potions my dear” she said “any find thyself crawling around like an overgrown earthworm.” The brazen cheek! I will begin my experiments again, and make myself the very subject! A beautiful mansion was once occupied by Uzul Balashi, a powerful wizard who mysteriously disappeared many years ago. His house is said to be full of treasure and magic items, but also dangerous traps and monsters
This 66 page adventure presents a wizards home in a city with three levels; two up and one down, with about eighty rooms. Parts of this match, exactly, what I am looking for in an adventure. It is, I think, difficult to keep that up through every room, and that shows in this adventure. More refinement in the text, from editing to layout, would also help. But, hey, I wouldn’t be mad running this.
So, Frank the wizzo has a house in town. A kind of U shaped building, with the fourth side being a courtyard open to the street, with gate. He’s got some human guards working for him. They stay in one of the courtyard wings, a leg of the U. Then Frank goes missing. The guards hag around, now little more than thugs. Some halfings start serving food, and the courtyard now becomes something like a hang out, the stoop everyone sits on and drinks booze and eats and whores and games. This section, the first dozen or so keys, is really REALLY well done. No body really cares if you hang out. You can gamble with the dudes. They are kind of bandits? More lazy unemployed men with swords. There are some hookers about that they keep around. It’s got this very “collapse of society” thing going on that I’m real in to. Nothing is pushed too far. Sure, you can brawl in the courtyard, no one really cares, except when weapons come out. I guess you’re kind of hanging out with all of the mean ass bullies in school, or something. Maybe some fights, maybe some drugs, you can hang around, some chicks, but no one is just stabbing anyone who wanders in. The vibe here is perfect. Those first dozen or so rooms, all contributing the scene, really do well this kind of grey area between banditry and not. Both from the guards pov AND from the pov of the party, who will perhaps just start killing them. This section can hold up and go toe to toe with some of the best content written. It’s not perfect, but the overall situation here is exactly what I mean when I say I’m looking for situations and not encounters. And did I mention the balconies and open areas on the maps? Nicely done.
The inside of the home drops off somewhat from this high praise. We get a pretty decent wizard home. There are plenty of mundane rooms and rooms with just a little bit more going on in them. The interactivity can feel a little slow in places, creatures are few and far between, it feels like, in places. There are some decent secret doors and so on to find, turning levers and the like is always fun. I’m fond on the “tax writeoff” skeleton accountant. The slug wanders around, and the party can free a shadow which can show up on the wanderer table if the uncover The Black Mirror. We’re not going to win any interactivity awards, but its also a cut above your typical fare. Monsters pound on doors. That shadow you free creeping around. The designer is taking the “normal” interactivity, or the usual stuff, and doing about as much as you can with it. Give a hint to some magic items existing and then hide things around the house. The shelf full of vials and potions that do things. Extending to the monsters, there’s are quite large butterflies in the garden. And when they gently land on you .. they stick in a needle and start sucking stirge style! Very nicely done. And, while the monster descriptions are generally present but not earth shattering, the art that goes with the adventure is a cut above and turns “hound with a skull face” in to something much much better in the art.
The writing here can tend to the long side in places. Or, perhaps, it feels long. The descriptions are trying to bring an evocative flair to things but don’t succeed perhaps as much as they think they do, those monster descriptions being a good example of that. It feels like more than a token effort was made, but they still were not really successful in the way, perhaps, the designer wanted them to be. And, magic items get a decent description in the appendix that doesn’t overstay its welcome. We get descriptions like ”A mouldy billiard table sits stoically in a seething sea of crawling centipedes. A constant sickening sound of thousands of moist vermin writhing. Atop the table remain a few forlorn billiard balls.” Stoically and forlorn are a bit much here, but moist vermin writhing is great! The constant sickening sound is better example, we know whats meant but it still doesn’t come through great. A more typical description for an emptyish room might be “Grimy sinks and a table covered in old mouldy cloths. A small cupboard contains a bucket of wood ash, soapwort, vinegar and a small vial of universal solvent (see appendix II).” I get, again, whats being tried for. Grimy. Old cloth. But it feels a little rote. As if we need to stick in an adjective from a thesaurus.
The formatting can, at times, be weird. Treasure, monsters, and Exits will, at times, be called out in separate headings in a room. I’m not sure this is really working the way the designer wants it to. The creatures, in particular, don’t feel integrated in to the room. The Exits section is less jarring, contains perhaps sounds from them or How The Secret Door Opens. The secrets, in particular, avoid the traps and door porn syndrome and give enough information to add some spice. He’s done a nice job with this section, including it when appropriate and using it to add variety.
In the world of haunted mansions we can point to Tegal, Xyntillian, Shadowbrook. Maybe Amber. This feels a little more grounded than those. A little less fanciful. It’s still present, but not pushed in flavour. Or, at least, that’s the way it feels. There is a giant garden. A giant slug, a shadow running around, and a body laid out on a slab in the basement. Teleporters and magic bells abound. But it FEELS a little more grounded.
I’m not mad at this. I wish the writing were a little tighter. And I wish the writing hit more, in terms of being evocative. And while there are a decent number of situations and things to fuck with, nothing, I think, every quite reaches the heights of the initial bandit/courtyard thing. The imp running around. The slug. The shadow. None of it really hits the way the opening does. But, Also, I’m gonna stick this in my starting city in Dungeonland. This is a good adventure.
This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. You’re going to get to see the first ten rooms, which should get you fine examples of the formatting and how it is used, as well as the writing style. As a bonus, you also get to see part of that opening section I like so much, although you miss their intro, which adds a lot.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/491255/slug-house?1892600

Posted in Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 3 Comments

Through Ultan’s Door #3

Posted on September 18, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Ben Laurence
Through Ultan's Door
OSR/1e
Levels 1-4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is $10 at DriveThru.

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

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Through Ultan’s Door #2

Posted on September 16, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Ben Laurence
Through Ultan's Door
OSR/1e
Levels 2-3

in the porcelain abattoirs of Zyan Above, the sacred butchers, supernal exsanguinators, and exalted flayers of the Fleischguild labor tirelessly at their exacting arts, offering sacrifices to appease the insatiable hunger of the Unrelenting Archons. Their holiest guild sites in the undercity are marked by ornate chum spouts that stream effluvia from their gristly rites. On the Great Sewer River, these spouts adorn the entrance to the catacombs interring Master Carvers along with their child prodigies. All praise be to Malprion, aspect of Vulgatis, Archon of unseemly and fecund growth!

This 41 digest page adventure details the catacombs of the guild of butchers, under a decadent city. It has about 31 rooms, pretty tightly packed, with a rich and evocative descriptive style in rooms that each contain a variety of interactivity, without it feeling like set pieces. Delightfully baroque and pushes the edges of what a pure text format can deliver. 

Like all reviews I do of good adventures, I don’t know where to start. I guess the descriptions, since that’s the first thing I noticed. Very near the beginning of the adventure there’s a section on factions. In it there are some descriptions of the people that make up those factions, the cultists and/or guild members. “They wear serene copper masks and purple robes. They come reluctant and skittish” Seren copper masks. Reluctant and skittish. Not just “guild members” or “religious cult”, but, rather, a decent description for the DM to riff on and that easily communicates the vibe. It’s not a lot of words, but it does SO much to bring these people to life. Not just generic people on the wanderers table, but those serene masks and purple robes. That’s a good fucking monster description. Or, there’s also this group “the tanned skin of their face is spread like a hideous mask before their flayed skull, stretched on fish hooks across the frame of a headdress, hanging taut and expressionless before the exposed flesh of their head.” Well now, there’s something you don’t see every day. These are fucking terrifying. Or, our undead/spirits who congregate in huddles mass groups and “Each clutches their pitiful remains assembled from the chum spout: an ear, a rotten liver, a scalp. In muttered and distracted whispers, they jealously plead for proper burial.” That’s a fucking monster, man. Not “2d4 zombies” or some shit like that. No, these things have character! I wish a lot more adventures did this to their creatures, at least in some small way. Opponents should be terrifying. The PLAYERS should shit themselves. Those descriptions would give me pause, as a player. 

And the room descriptions continue this trend. A very basic description would be “Two raised basins flank the passageway to the north. The south end of this room is taken up with eight small sarcophagi flanking a dais with the statue of a woman” This is quite the tersely worded description, and pretty good for an initial first impression of the room by the players. What follows then is about a page and half of additional description. The basins. The statue. The sarcophagi. All of the things noticed in the initial room description. The initial one doesn’t overdescribe, it just lays things out, for the players to investigate further, the way an exploration adventure should proceed. And, before ALL of those extra descriptions is a little note that states you could meet a monster here. The most important thing, the initial description, is first. Then the monster note, since it could appear after the party arrive. THEN we get the individual descriptions of the things. “The marble statue of a middle-aged woman sits facing the sarcophagi with her face in her hands, shoulders heavy with grief, robes painted with rich designs, bar and skin and hair unpainted alabaster.” It’s a good description. And then, of course, we get some DM notes as well. And, again, in the descriptions for the treasures we get things like “A bronze thimble carved with vines bearing tiny amethyst grapes (50gp), and a silver sewing egg with needles and a spool of purple thread nestled within (75gp).” The entire thing, monsters, rooms, treasures, they are all rich and lusciously described.  It’s a good job. It pushes the bare text, with occasional bullets, formatting to its absolute limits, but a clear vision and understanding of the sectioning of the room description wins the day. They can tend long but are manageable. 

And those descriptions tend to be long because of the interactivity in the various rooms. They are not one trick ponies, with just one thing going on, but are rich and full of things to do. That room I described has a creature that might appear. The two basins that can be interacted with. The statue (just a statue) and then eight sarcophagi to explore and fuck with. And loot. And, on top of all of that, fucking with shit in here might bring other creatures down on you. Both in the near term, for those flayed dudes, and in the longer term with the guild posting guards and such. For a tomb, this place feels alive and lived in. (And, to be fair, I guess it is, since the guild still actively kind of uses it/maintains it) The entire thing has this vibe of effortless design. At a glance, this just looks like a zine, like any of the other hundreds that come out. But it’s not like those, it really does have some design behind it. From the minor game mechanic changes that spur gameplay, like the wandering monster warning signs, to the design of the map, both evocative and putting an interesting part of the complex in a , shall we say, less frequented area. And, also, we all know, that the lair is where the loot is, right? Everything else is just winnowing the parties resources. The deep play of the rooms … and it all comes in pretty much seamlessly. It’s not bragging, or calling out the design choices, they are all integrated in. 

I’m down with this. For any complex under a jaded and teeming city full of miscreants, the undercity of Old London, teeming with life above and a hundred thousand delights and torments there and below. Thus thing successfully communicates that vibe. Rich language, great traps, encounters, roleplaying possabilities. Problems with no immediately visible solutions but what the party devises. 

GREAT adventure. And shame on me for taking so long to get to it. Sometimes things drop off my radar.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The ten page preview is MORE than enough to get an idea of what is going on. Great preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/279520/through-ultan-s-door-issue-2?1892600

Posted in Level 2, Reviews, The Best | 8 Comments

A Problem in Port Haven

Posted on September 14, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Stephen Smith
Mister Smith Design
BECMI
Levels 1-3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Treasures of the Necropolis

Posted on September 11, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Gabor Lux
First Hungarian D20 Society
OSR
Levels 3-7

[A place of burial since primordial eras, this is a site of crumbling (and sometimes repurposed) mausoleums, catacomb passages, and more oddities] [one of the subterranean complexes beneath the City of Vultures. Located under the crooked streets of the Beggars’ District (also described), this is a section of the undercity that goes from reasonably simple to remarkably deadly. From the Court of the Pariah-King to the Domain of Virotán and the Ceramic Space, it just gets stranger and more vicious.]

This 56 page supplement presents four different dungeons, each with multiple levels and a large number of rooms. Delightfully idiosyncratic, with consistently enough information to fire the imagination without droning on. It harkens back to Dungeon of the Bear and Arduin with shades of Barker. Everything you love about old school.

There are a couple of dungeons presented here. The first are an above ground graveyard complex with tunnels underneath, so two levels. The second is multi-level (four?) complex under the beggar district in the City of Vultures. Then there’s a kind of fantasy/fairy castle, replete with pennants flying, on a rolling hills full of flowers, manned by the Knights of Roses. Finally, there’s the tower of a retired thief back in the beggar district, by far the shortest of the four. The first three are all excellent, with the fourth being good but a little weaker. (It’s a fucking tower, what do you do with that?) 

I find these multi-dungeon volumes hard to review, particularly when especially good or bad, since I could pages and pages on each of the dungeons. I’m going to kind of cover the vibe of each and then generalize a lot in what they common in how they communicate that vibe and facilitate play. The outlier in tone is the Castle of Rose Knight. “Flowering meadows of improbable beauty cover the perpetually sunlit slopes, and a small castle rises  in the middle with fluttering pennons  on peaked towers.” Approaching, a feat unto itself, you meet the Knight of Roses who challenges you to single combat. A civilized man, to fight blood, horse fall, and then invites you in to the castle win or lose: he is, after all, a gentleman. And evil gentleman, but a gentleman none the less. Inside we get this kind of .. folklore or fairytale view of a castle. Fantasy or high fantasy? I feel like all four of those words now mean something else now, so, back to those kind of original pre-80’s definitions. Got the vibe? Good. The first and second are completely different. The first is an ancient graveyard with tunnel underneath … home to the Brain Eaters! (Which, I must say, is a great way to describe ghouls. I love it!) And then the second is a kind of multi-level dungeon beneath the beggar section of the city of vultures. You’ve got businesses, with entrances from the streets, well access, various sects/cults/factions with interesting in certain areas … it’s got a very urban vibe while still feeling like it’s a dungeon. The place is alive … even the abandoned sections. 🙂 Great use of zones, especially in this dungeon.

The Gaborian excels at a turn of phrase and interactivity and that is what helps makes these dungeons great. A little serious, a little snark, and a terse description that leaves you hanging and wanting more … which excites you and you fill in those sections with your own DM brain. Which is what EVERY description should do. And he does this, time after time, with remarkably few words. There are embellishments here to bring home the environments to the players/characters. “Feeling of sour taste in mouth, slight vertigo.” Every fucking time I am bitch hing about telling instead of showing I am comparing it to this. When I bitch about a descriptions that says a location is weird, or feels weird, or something like that, I am contracting it to this. A sour taste in your mouth and slight vertigo. That’s weird. That’s a weird feeling for your character. Those eight words communicate the feeling that the abstracted “weird” word is going for. But it does it in a visceral and concrete way. That’s how you show instead of telling. There’s just enough here to be tantalizing, to get you excited, to build on. A masterclass in getting the vibe across.

Interactivity is great, across the board, but particularly in the second adventure, under the beggars quarter. You really get the sense that this place is alive and that it is both a part of the city and distinct and separate from it. The various factions running around, doing their own thing, alongside forgotten rooms and the like. There’s a tendency, in a lot of dungeons, for a room to have one thing in it. And that’s a meme not present here. Time and again the various rooms will have multiple things in them, a real depth to the adventure environment not present in others. No, it’s not every room, but its enough to make me recognize it. The puzzles are nor ham handed riddles, but rather integrated in to the environment. The creatures are not throw-aways but rather seem like they should be there and fit in well. It’s that whole “image the place and THEN figure out what in the book makes sense to describe it” It’s not a room with a black pudding in it. The room was imagined and then a black pudding was a close enough creature to what was meant to be Imagination first. 

There’s a wandering poet, on the wandering table, looking for his lost love, a dancing girl. There’s another dancing girl, freshly escaped from the underground tunnels. There are ghouls, feasting on the poets love, in league with the “escaped” dancing girl. Bitches man. 

Great dungeons with distinct flavours: ancient graveyard, undercity, fantasy castle. And yet each loaded with diverse interactivity and evocative descriptions that are easy to digest. This is the way you write a dungeon!

This is $10 at the storefront.

https://emdt.bigcartel.com/product/echoes-from-fomalhaut-12-treasures-of-the-necropolis

Posted in Level 4, Level 5, Reviews, ribbet, ribbet, The Best | 18 Comments

Graveyard Dirt

Posted on September 9, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
Seba G.M.
Dados Tostados
Knave2
"Low Levels"

Apollo and his son, two masters together, Wouldn’t know how to mend me; their craft has failed me, Goodbye, pleasant Sun! My eyes are stuffed, My body descends where everything is disassembled. ~Sonnet posthumes, Pierre de Ronsard~

This forty page booklet about skeletons uses twenty pages to present an adventure with three scenes that takes about four pages to describe, generously. There’s nothing here.

This is a supplement that deals with skeletons. New spells about skeletons. Some new skeleton variants. A dude that really likes skeletons. And a skeleton based adventure. Or, rather, “adventure.” Someone has been digging up graveyards in the region. Duke Lotto sends you over to the this town of ropemakers to guard their graveyard. Scene one is arriving at town, fucking around with the townfolk, etc. Scene two is a group of skeletons digging up the graveyard that night. Scene three is the party fighting a wight, back at the skeletons home base, which the party needs to track the skeletons back to. 

That’s your adventure. Three scenes. All of which are completely straightforward. And describes, I must say, in few words. I’m gonna give you the scene two descriptions. Skeletons come marching out of the forest in to the graveyard. They have tools to dig it up. One skeleton seems to be in charge. I am NOT fucking around when I say that the detail, beyond that, is not really present. That’s your fucking scene. Fight them. Follow them back, it’s up to you. 

The whole execution of the adventure is not really an adventure, at least not by my taxonomy. “Hey man, I had this idea last night that some skeletons could dig up a graveyard!” That’s all this is, some VERY general ideas of what could happen. And by “what could happen” I mean “go to town, dig up a graveyard, fight a wight in charge.” Because there’s nothing more to be done other than that. 

There’s a map! Of the village! It doesn’t make sense! There are, if I recall correctly, eight locations on the map. The legend says things like “the bridge (over the river)” or “the hunters lodge” or “the westward road” or “the hemp farm”. (No doubt the villagers talk incessantly about how Lord Jefferon grew hemp …) None of the locations are described, so, it’s not that kind of map. I guess you could ad lib some shit about people working in the hemp fields, or something like that. I’m not morally opposed to this. I’m also not especially thrilled for an adventure to take this approach when there is absolutely no content at all for the main part of the adventure. It feels like some amount of effort could be spent on the rest of the fucking adventure instead of this watercolor-like map of a village with locations. Similarly, the valley that the weight lives in has a map, but it no keys on it. And some textual mentions of a kind of underground abandoned city that the wight lives in. No other detail/maps/etc described. I think, perhaps, even worse though, is how the map actually seems to conflict with the text in a few places. The graveyard is on the western side of a river. The village hugs the eastern shore. The skeletons march out of the eastern wood. So … they march through town? Or, do I have my directions mixed up? There is no compass on the map, so, … maybe the skeletons march out of the woods right next to the graveyard? Also, the weights lair isn’t on the village map, not even with an arrow or something. It’s like all of this shit is just an afterthought. 

I don’t know what else to say here. There’s no real text imagery to speak of. It does use skill checks. Tracking the skeletons back through the forest “deals d4 damage unless the characters pass a Constitution Check (TN 16.” I hate that shit. First, haven’t there been abot fifty bajillion articles on this kind of shit and why its bad, thanks to disaster that was third edition skills? You know, every one in the party has a +50 to spot hidden, and shit like that, which leads to an arms race in checks vs ability, and the min/maxxing that a decent portion of the population these days  thinks D&D is? Hmm, that was a long sentence. I must really dislike that. Not to mention perhaps an even more egregious sin: the abstraction of fun. Why have the skill check instead of just having a scene that the party can work to overcome? Why just abstract away the fun to a die roll? If you’re ok with this then why not just have each party member roll a d6 at the start of the game session. 1-3 you live and 4-6 you died on the adventure. Then at least you could all go drinking or something. It’s the same fucking thing. The game is what happens before those die rolls, the journey through the forest, the obstacles overcome, the wacky plans, etc. That IS the game of D&D.

This bullshit abstraction makes me feel cheated, Mr Lydon.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. All title pages and shit like that, with one page of backstory for the wight. Shitty preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/492386/graveyard-dirt?1892600

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Trouble at Bigby’s Meadery

Posted on September 7, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Vanessa Nairn
Snail Song Studios
OSE
"Low Levels"

Jebediah Bigby is a meadmaker extraordinaire, famous throughout the region for his delicious mead. The secret to his success is simple, ‘Big Bees make better honey.’ However, rumours run wild as to the true secret of Bigby’s success. Now that shipments have started going missing, it’s your job to delve into the meadery and find out!

This 34 page adventure presents an underground brewery with bees and goblins with a small above ground section. A rather A rather standard fare that doesn’t overstay, with the usual issues. Where ‘standard fare’ has the usual low-interest meaning. 

So, there’s nothing special about this adventure. It’s the usual go in a room and stan things kind of affair. This comes along with poor text/descriptions, etc saving grace being the text doesn’t drone on and on. But, also, I had this idea …

What’s going on here is the halfling Bigby (no relation) runs a meadery. Another halfling meader rival, Penelope Smallby, hires a hobgoblin and his goblin band to raid it and get the secret recipe. It’s not Love. Turns out ol Bigby has been running his mead through a fishtank with slopfish in it, which infuses an unnatural happiness in his mead. And in stronger doses it makes you not be able to feel ANYTHING ut joy, even during the greatest tragedies. Also, Penelope doesn’t want to pay the goblins. Also, Bigby is cheery and morbidly obese. There’s an entry on the (aboveground) wandering monster table that has a group of halfing nature enthusiasts about and about enjoying watching the bees. The giant bees. …  I hope you’re thinking what I’m thinking! There was an opportunity here, that I initially thought the adventure was going to go down, for a REALLY good adventure. Murder, betrayal, suicides in town. Extortion. Bribes. Cover-ups! All of the seediness of a small town coming out and being amplified. You can imagine Poirot at the end emphasizing “And all for a mead recipe!” The cheeriness of the halflings. The absurdity of the situation, juxtaposed with the awfulness of the consequences of the actions taken. That’s an awesome fucking adventure!

But this one is just your normal fare. Walk in to rooms in an underground area. Meet a goblin. Or rat. Or bee. Maybe talk to a goblin. Stab everything else, probably. The height of interactivity is finding a key behind a painting (nice!) or following some pipes behind a wall. Again, nice. But these are very isolated examples. The vast majority of it is just walking to a room with very little for the DM to work with. You know the deal, just one thing in the room. And the thing is simple. And it usually doesn’t have implications for things further/deeper in to the dungeon. There’s no build up or mystery.

This isn’t helped much by the words. What we get, time after time, is some text that looks like read-aloud but is really a kind of narrator’s commentary in a movie or tv show. “Normally, the ground floor of Bigby’s Meadery is well kept and serves as a bar and storefront. However, ever since Glurgak’s band took over, it looks like a hurricane has hit it, with broken bottles and furniture scattered about” I can imagine the narrator in those old Discworld Tv Movies. Or “A decorative garden that offers one of the sources of pollen for Bigby’s Giant Bees.” That’s more of a name, rather than a description? The text should inspire the DM to greatness, to plant a solid idea in their head that they can then riff off of, making it more than the sum of the its words. 

This isn’t an offensive dungeon. It’s hard to imagine something this simplistic to be offensive. I’m not even sure its a dull dungeon. It’s more of a … staid dungeon and/or adventure? I wish it were more. I wish the giant bee/honey/mead thing was more prevalent in more rooms, and really lent a vibe of being immersed in it. But the descriptions just aren’t evocative enough for that.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages. That gives you the background info that I though would be great as a tragedy, but it needed to also show some rooms so we can get a sense of what the core of the adventure looks like.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/491923/trouble-at-bigby-s-meadery?1892600

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Secret Vault of the Windswept Island

Posted on September 4, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By Gabriel Ramos
Wonder Twin Harmony
OSE
Levels 1-3

On the lonely Windswept Island a death cult’s dungeon hides the path to an extraplanar vault with a macabre ritual. Within that dreadful vault rests a powerful sword imbued with the soul of the death deity’s most fervent fanatic.

This forty page adventure uses twelve pages to describe seven rooms in a puzzle dungeon. Intricate rooms with some decent imagery, but it all feels like a video game, with confusing descriptions.

Member when, back when there were these video games that were co-op, in a certain way? Maybe split-screen couch co-op, and they were advertised that you could play them with your girlfriend, cause girls don’t like to play videogames. And you’d run along in your own little separate splitscreens and do things in one area to help the person in the other are get past some obstacle? Portal was kind of the same thing, except it was just you. This adventure is that.

You walk in the front door of the dungeon and the doors slam shut behind you (sigh) and the giant statue says something like “go get the magic sword and present it to me and I’ll let you out.” (sigh) Anyway, you’re supposed to figure out that a party member needs to kill themself. Then you can use the green orb in the room to turn them in to a ghost. They then have a limited amount of time to walk through a wall and pull levers and so on. In some other room (that you don’t see till later, remember you’re trapped) there’s a fresco that implies you can bring them back to life again. So, stuck in a room forever with some vague riddle telling you to kill yourself. Until you do so. And use the green orb right. 

From there things get a bit confusing … I swear I have gone through this multiple times and, just like that fucking dam thing in Zork 2, I cannot figure out what the fuck I am supposed to do. I THINK the ghost goes west to pull a lever, which unlocks the room with hints in it, and then you go east to get a key and then put the key in the lock in the hint room and then get the sword. I THINK. I note that this is all outlined in a summary section and individual parts are noted in the room descriptions, but I STILL can’t really figure out if that’s the correct reading. The whole ghost/no-ghost thing is also a mess. Oh, and, also, remember, fuck around too much and your ghost buddy dies for realsies. 

That problem, the one of confusion for the DM, is a trend in this adventure. At one point there’s a text description that has some references to cones and spheres, I think, and then says something like there’s a malnourished cube down in a pit. What the fuck is a malnourished cube? I read and reread and then skipped it … only to find, at the end of the room entry on a different page, that it’s a malnourished GELATINOUS cube.  Ohhhhhh! That makes sense! And now the algae line on the wall makes sense also! So much more now makes sense! And these are not isolated examples, in a seven room dungeon. The text, the DM text, is cumbersome. It’s using some formatting where room exits are very important and high up, so shit about the room that might be important is further down, sometimes on another page, and it’s not always obvious that the text continues. So you look at it thinking “huh. What am I missing?” At one point there’s a note that the green orb can tell “A creature is given the time of its lingering life force potential were it to die.” After puzzling that out for a great long while I think I decided that it tells a ghost how long until it does for realsies. I think.

And the individual rooms tend to be set-piecy. It feels for all the world like you’re in some Portal stage that you need to clear to move on to the next one. That’s not the vibe I’m going for in D&D. But, hey, I recognize that could be your vibe. For some reason … If you like rearranging blocks on the floor to spell a death gods name while skeletons come out each round to fight you until you’re done. It’s just TOO blatantly a puzzle. Like you just handed someone a crossword puzzle and told them to solve it to cross the river Styx. 

There’s some good stuff in here also. There’s a decent overview, in most rooms, which could be read-aloud, which generally gives a very strong impression of the room. Cherry picking room five “Chained skulls hanging from the ceiling emit a pale blue light, illuminating a long hallway of constantly rippling sand. An obsidian altar stands before a barred archway.” Not the best, from a “where is what? “ standpoint, but still a cool room description that cements it and really makes you feel like you are somewhere. Although, it is leaning towards “stick a cool adjective in” syndrome. Yet I will the admit the line is fine between sticking in a cool adjective and good writing. 

I’ve got a lot of nits around treasure, with skeletons with diamonds for teethe not getting any worth. But, also, the hook treasure map only is readable on moonless nights. Groovy! And a severed hand in a box wears a ring. A cursed ring! I like it! And in other places we’ve got heads of kings with their golden crows nailed to their heads. Ouchies! Or their wrists bound with rusty barbed chains. But, then again, the entire “explore the island” section is really perfunctory and kind of a museum tour.

If I excuse the set piece nature, then more focus on the text could have solved the confusion issues. (Where was that editor?) And there is clearly a bit of talent for conjuring up a memorable scene and at least describing it initially. Yeah, needs more focus, both on the wilderness sections especially and in the dungeon in general. And the concept it kind of lame. But, given a non-lame concept I would be interested in seeing something … say, a full on dungeon/adventure? 

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see the ritual overview I had trouble with, and some of the island … for which there is no map. Not a great preview, since there are no rooms, but not a terrible one either.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/489237/secret-vault-of-the-windswept-island?1892600

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The Barrow of Bhalagrim

Posted on September 2, 2024 by Bryce Lynch 
By G.A. Mitchell
Self Published
OSR
Level 1

A barrow has sat on a hillside for centuries, unnoticed by all save a few grazing cattle. But in recent years the barrow has grown a reputation for darkness. Suspicious tales are whispered about a malevolent creeping spirit that steals from the barrow at night to eat livestock and carry off the unwary. Yet that is not all. Strange men came through town of late, all heading in the direction of the barrow. Who knows what cruel and evil god these new arrivals worship, or what fell machinations they plot from within the old barrow’s halls.

This eleven page adventure presents an eleven room barrow. It’s a weird mix of classic fantasy, almost from folklore, and standard dull fantasy. It’s trying, but the designer hasn’t quite mastered the skill of writing a room description, both from the read-aloud or DM text.

I love me a barrow adventure! Ancient hills with crumbling standing stones on top and weathered lintels leading to narrow tunnels. Sign me up! And this adventure uses both the word verisimilitude AND effluvium?! Someone is going for that old school D&D vibe! And that comes through, well, in places. There’s this nice little encounter inside, in a natural chamber with a pool in it. And a harpy, luring the party in to drown. Yeah, the rooms al little small and Ms Harpy aint gonna succeed well, I suspect, against a full party, but it really does a good job, in its presentation, of converting this kind of classic fantasy vibe, free of all of the RPG bullshit. Likewise, we have a giant spider, who talks, and her daughters, in one room. And she’s got this cultist trapped in her webs, who’s kind of an idiot, who they are keeping alive because he’s a fool. At least temporarily. Yeah, yeah, I like talking animals. But, also, the VIBE from The Hobbit is a really good one. Maybe a little too clean, but that’s the way I rumble. And the talking spiders really communicate that vibe. You can like different things, I don’t care, but I think this kind of thing really communicates situations in which the party can be free thinkers, and rewarded for it, instead of just rolling a fucking number from their character sheets. And that’s the atmosphere I want in my game. 

I want to point out, also, a description of a bubbling cauldron which appears in one of the final rooms: “A hissing pool, thick with creamy brown slime bubbles with slithering movement. Worm-things spasm and groan beneath the fat-skin on the surface of the font which faintly glows, casting lurid whispering shadows about the vaulted hall.” I can get down with almost all of that. The hissing pool. Thick creamy brown. Slithering. A fat skin. The whole casting lurid whispers thing goes a bit over the top for me, but the rest of it is pretty decent. 

But, alas, the rest of this is the usual that we find in adventures. The baddies are cultists of the worm god, although, that whole worm god motif doesn’t really come through much at all. Just a veneer, really, with little vivadry. And the read-aloud is italics, which is hard on the eyes for long sections of it. And the DM’s text contains a lot of room history that is irrelevent to the play at the table. The entrance tells us “This is the doorway into the barrow. It was smashed open with prybars and picks and hauled open by Kizvin and his cult followers two weeks ago.” Yup, the entrance is usually the entrance. And the backstory here is the third, or fourth, time we’ve been told it in the adventure. It all comes off as a rather staid location rather than a dynamic one, full of mystery. 

And then there’s the timer. The adventure tells us its a timer. It’s actually more a timeline. Days one through seven, with different things happening each day, like the spiders eating the dude and then on the final day the worm god being summoned forth. But, this has a problem. While timelines are great, they move things and make the world seem alive, timers are different. Timelines usually give a hint that a timER exists. You learn that you need to deal with the situation or something bad might happen. The timer here, if we can call it that rather than a timeline, doesn’t really give any hint at all that The End is coming, and thus there is no way for the party to know. Any tension that was possible is not present. Further, certain aspects of the timeline actively work against the fun of the adventure, like the spiders killing the dude they’ve captured. Realistic? Sure. But the point is fun. And if killing him (the spiders killing him) detracts from the fun then why do it? He’s not a resource for the players. They don’t know the spider will kill him. There’s no race against time, at least not one that the party knows about. I make wanderer checks in the open, and openly advance the wanderer time wheel (Goblinoid Games, if memory serves?) It’s the tension. You have to know you are making a decision in order to feel the tension from that decision. 

There are elements here that show promise. Some interesting encounters and a decent description or two. But, also, a lack of focus on the keys and it slips in to a kind of staid cultist/tomb vibe. 

This is free at DriveThru.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/491280/the-barrow-of-bhalagrim-jem1?1892600

That’s the fucking way you explore a fucking barrow!

Posted in Reviews | 12 Comments