tenfootpole.org

By Fabricio Garcia
Kobold King
OSR
Level 3

Bugbears are attacking the dwarfs on their way up the mountain to make offerings to their god. A group of elf scholars came to the region to study the presence of bugbears in such remote region and they are stopping the dwarfs in their attacks against the bugbears. Furious with the lack of offerings and prayers. The dwarven god is eminent to turn away from the region and allowing monsters to roam free. The PC’s can seek the god absolution on the dwarfs instead or even make them leave the region and help the bugbears in taking the region and put their gods in power of Altuvia.

(This is a PDF but there is an Obsidian markup file. Again, I tried to install obsidian and get it going to view it the way it was meant to be viewed, got it installed, but again couldn’t figure out how to view/work with the markup file)

This sixty page adventure describes … I don’t really know what it describes. A political situation? A couple of dungeons surrounding a political situation? It’s all just general ideas, with few specifics, and almost certainly worth no time. And yet, I find the premise intriguing in a weirdly real-life cynical way.

The marketing blurb is essentially correct. Some dwarves were driven above ground by oozes attacking their mines. They have no ore. They are trying to get ore from their cousins but the elf lands are in the way and  “Now the dwarfs wait for the complicated and unhurried elf politics allows the ore transport.” Noice! And, now, some bugbears have moved in to the region. Their attacks are preventing the dwarves from getting to their temple to honor their goddess. This WILL eventually cause her to abandon them and then the bugbear god will move in to set up shop, which is the EXPLICIT plan of the bugbears. IE: preventing the dwarves from worshipping their goddess so she’ll abandon them and their dude can take up the mantle of the region. But, now, also, with the bugbears showing up, some elf researchers have shown up and have a manor home in the wilderness where they’ve set up base. They want to study the bugbear migrations, which they find unusual, and are preventing the dwarves from attacking the bugbears. If we think of the eves as having superior technology/gods/magic/armies, then the position of the dwarves becomes quite interesting. Piss off the local elves and maybe influence the larger political “ore from our cousins” thing? Are there local dwarves acting as guides to the elves, or, maybe, nearby halflings that trade with the dwarves but also sell their services to the elves? The analog of an asymmetric power relationship, and the consequences to all parties, it quite interesting. The elves WILL, through their good natured scholastic meddling, cause the dwarves to be wiped out and the bugbears to take over the region. Do they care? Will they be wiped out also? This is all fucking magnificent. The comparisons to real life are obvious.

And almost nothing of substance is in the adventure. Some of what I described is present in the adventure. Some of it is shit I inferred, like dwarf collaborators or halflings, or other linkages. But, also, beyond a simple overview, essentially matching in context and length what I described, there is nothing of any of this present in the adventure. The individuals, the timeline, everything else, none of it really is related to the overall situation described. Yes, the bugbears want to kill and maybe an elf , described, wants to study shit. But these kind of grand machinations, or even minor machinations, are just not present in the adventure. At best you’ll get an NPC description who has a quest like “I want some elven wine.”

For it being sixty pages there is remarkably little specific to point to. The dwarf mines have a map, but no key, just instructions to roll on random tables. But, even then, I’m not sure I can make heads or tails of the map. Are the rectangles rooms? Or are those just hallways that meet up? What are the grey lines? And then the map of a ruined manor is not keyed, with just things like “Bedroom 1 : The room to the left of the corridor” Creature amounts and mundane treasures, including potions and scrolls are just not present, explicitly so, fitting in to some “for use with any system” statement. I can’t fathom ever doing this in an adventure. 

This is SO open ended, SO non-specific that it amounts to just the overall situation description, some NPC descriptions that don’t tie in very well, and site descriptions that are almost as vague and non-specific as you can possibly have and still call it a site description. You’re going to have to wing, and add to and expand everything. I get it, we do some of that when running a game. But there is SO little direction here, so little that is specific, that this amounts to very little more than napkin notes and ideas of what could be going on in various places with various people. In sixty pages.  I think I’m done with Kobold King. 

This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569519/bugbears-in-the-mountains-markdown-mini-setting?1892600

By Dinko "Salty Nick" Galeti?
Salty Nick's Tavern
Generic/Universal/D&D
Levels 5-6

Strange phenomena plague the land: saltwater rain, shared dreams of a tide covering the land, shallow puddles reflecting deep, strange oceans. Some people have even fallen into puddles and disappeared entirely. The epicenter of the phenomena has been traced to the mausoleum of an eccentric who believed the whole land was once under the sea. Whether to stop this, explore it, or just to loot the tomb, the players have arrived to the mausoleum.

This eleven page adventure uses two-ish pages t describe about five-ish rooms in a mausoleum being invaded by an aquatic entity. There are hints here of sophisticated play, and maddeningly abstracted text that somehow is also wall of text. The theming never comes through well and it’s hampered by it use of a 5e style guide.

What can i say, I found the title appealing. Alas, there are no hills or screams, much less SCREAMS.

Some dude really thinks the world was underwater at some point. He has a massive tomb built, is buried in it, and then his belief in that idea is so strong that a water-plane entity uses the belief to try to force its way through to our plane. 

There’s an interesting concept in this adventure in the way it handles illusion. Basically, the tomb is full of illusions, or, maybe, altered realities, but the adventure uses the word illusions. Before the first room you make a choice, after talking to the dudes friendly spirit, as to if you believe his theory or not. If you do believe then you treat the illusions as real and the non-illusions as illusions. If you do not believe then the illusions are illusions to you and the real dungeon is real. Like one of those scifi episodes where half the cast is out of phase or some such.  Some of the sections of the dungeon are filled with water, and there are shafts, so if you believe then you can swim up a shaft, and things like that. (And need water breathing!) The concept is haltingly implemented and not leaned heavily into, but the idea is an intriguing one. 

There’s one or two spots where the some interesting things come in to play. The standard “clear the rubble away” thing in one room has the note “Clearing it without precautions causee another collapse.” Excellent cause and effect there and a lack of punishment for players who are not on autopilot. In another section, where you meet the dudes spirit at the start “How to summon Sutton’s spirit is up to the PCs. As a rule of thumb, spending a resource such as a spell slot should work. Actions such as meditating on the bench or lighting the statue’s pipe reveal that the spirit wants to manifest but is struggling to.” Again, pretty decent old school sensibilities. Nothing prescribed but some direction to the DM to have some latitude in their judgements. This is akin to something like the Bless spell being a good catch-all for solving many problems. Rulings, not rules, yes? I suspect, from this, that the dude is a decent DM. 

But author …

There are a few quibbles here before the major issues. We’re told that people are missing, strange things going on, etc, and “The epicenter of these phenomena has been traced to Lubber’s Rest” with nothing more beyond that. In spite of the intro background, which is non-trivial, this is essentially just a site in the middle of nowhere for you to explore, even though “the PCs arrived to Lubber’s Rest with hopes of stopping these events and finding the missing people.” So, the framing to support the intro is just not present. At all. Which would be fine if the intro didn’t imply that it SHOULD be there. We’re just looking at a site.

But, more than that, there are some issues with the presentation and abstraction. The “5e template” was used here. This means sections of italics that are longer than they should be. This means long paragraphs of text with little in the way of formatting to help you scan the adventure. You’re digging through A LOT of text in this, with little to separate things and help you locate information. It is, I think, an issue with Wall of Text, even though there are line breaks and some bullets, there’s not section headings or bolding to help a DM figure out where to look for what. And that’s a major problem. 

Second is a frustrating amount of abstraction and things simply left out. You will run in to weird symbols that are being used to help summon the aquatic planer entity … but no mention of destroying them. And this is theme, the lack of even minimal guidance for things you WNT to fuck with. When you combine this with the amount of text used to describe and denote other, trivial things, it makes you wonder why the emphasis was placed where it was.

Eleven of the rooms are simply abstracted away. Roll on a table to add a couple of features and then roll on a table for an encounter. An encounter like “Aggressive illusory creature swims in. (Submerged rooms only)” Uh. Ok. And, yet, here’s room nineteen “Contains a heap of rocks, with 4d8 embedded raw rubies. Dumped here by thralls.” This is aggressively terse. Was there not enough room in the adventure for the other rooms, given the terseness of this one? And no value for the rubies? 

And, further, note the lack of evocative text. Nothing about a tomb or aquatic/semi-aquatic environment comes through here at all. And this is par for the course in the adventure. There’s a hefty intro. There’s a hefty appendix. But the actual rooms are terse without actually giving much of an impression at all.

What’s a DM to do? There’s little favour here. And I can roll on a table out of a book.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $5. The preview is ten of the eleven pages, so, a decent preview. You can see both the wall of text in the rooms at the beginning as well as the overly terse ones at the end, and the lack of specificity and lack of formatting to help locate information.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569157/the-hills-have-screams?1892600

By Stephen Green
Moonwhisper Magic
OSE
Level ... 3?

The world is shattered, the wizards are gone, and the sea swallows the ruins of their age. Scattered across the waves lie the broken islands of a forgotten empire places of fire, frost, and ancient magic. Among them stands the Isle of Ruk, a frontier of black sands, steaming jungles, and secrets buried beneath volcanic stone. […]  The wizards are dead. Their secrets are not.

This 64 page adventure uses about seven pages to describe about fifty encounters in two dungeon on an island, with all of the supporting pages being abstracted worldbuilding. There’s a whole lot of generalizations and could be’s in here with actual encounters and locations that don’t come close to realizing the designers vision, I suspect. 

This is an island with a couple of towns on it, a barrow field with sixteen locations, and a three level dungeon with about 45 or so rooms. With got this world where WIZARDS fucked up, they are all gone now but the world is blanketed in ice except for these volcanos around that keep things warm. A pretty decent number of pages is used to describe all of this, although it plays little to no import on the adventure. It’s just an island with a couple of towns and a couple of adventuring locations. The ice and volcano doesn’t really come through much. There is a volcano/volcano cultists/fire spirits, especially in the main dungeon, but that theming is still not really present at all.

The main town is described in a somewhat interesting way, at least in the keys for it. “1. Church of Foki has a large cauldron and offers free food for all.” That’s the first line for the temple location, in bold, as a kind of a location header. It’s an interesting way to embed the crux of the location in to the key title, allowing you to know immediately what the main thrust of it is. There’s a related concept with dungeon keys that I sometimes talk about, where instead of “11.” or “11. Bedroom” you put something like “11. Mildewed Victorian Bedroom.” In that instance you are framing the room encounter, preloading the DMs mind, so they interpret what is to come in the description with a “Mildewed Victorian Bedroom” mindset. It’s not exactly consistently used in the town descriptions, but it is present in places and does a great job when it is present.

The rest of the adventure is much murkier in its descriptions. 

There’s this abstraction going on, a bit different than other abstractions I generally see. It’s written almost like a regional guide that introduces mysteries without explanation. This is pretty consistent in the overviews of the various areas, which do seem to take up the bulk of the adventure. It comes off with a hefty lean to the purple side of the spectrum. “Thin wisps of yellow smoke coil lazily from the darkness within, carrying the acrid tang of sulphur and old fire. The mountain air snatches them, pulling them apart and scattering their scent into the breeze, but the trace remains a lingering reminder of whatever festers in the depths beyond.” That whole last sentence, with the snatching and scattering and festering in the depths beyond. It’s clearly going for inspiration for the DM, but there is FAR too much of it, especially considering the depths beyond don’t really live up to the concepts introduced. It certainly feels like the bulk of the adventure is made of these general overarching theme writing sections that meet more novelization rather than turning in to something concrete. 

This can then be contrasted with the actual location descriptions in the adventuring sites. “3.7 Firedrake (1) has made its lair here.” That’s not much of a description, eh, for a festering depth? Or, for another one “Black stone walls. In the middle of the room is an ancient ashy corpse. A Shadow (1) preys on adventurers.” A little more to this, but still not really living up, I think, to the vision the designer had in their minds when putting this down to paper. 

And then there are a few out of place things present. One room on the second level has a table and two chairs and a wardrobe in it. And a sad eyed bard sitting at the table drinking. Uh … there are fire spirits. Fire cultists. Gomens. Shadows. And dude is just sitting there in his cups? A dungeon population table can help inspire us to encounters but it does needs to be placed in context. Lost his party? Just hanging out for funsies? Refuge from a cult? The framing here, or complete lack of it besides him drinking in a room with a wardrobe, just is out of place. Minimal keying would have the DM making things up, as they would if populating from a table. A word of two of context would allow the DM to riff. I’m not really sure what to make of something so seemingly out of place. “Uh, there are a bunch of civvies on level eight of the balrogs lair having a format dance? Uh …”

There’s just this disconnect. The page count is devoted to the world and generalized framing that is leaning purple while the actual dungeon keys are less than thrilling in the capacity they serve. The vision presented in the world building never really comes to pass.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages and doesn’t really show you anything, just a brief overview, this is what an RPG is type of things. We need some meat in a preview to understand if the product is right for us.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/568698/dungeon-module-isle-of-ruk?1892600

By Matt Gullett
The Long Con Press
OSR
Levels 1-2

The adventure starts in the rough-and-tumble port city of Warrenburg during the revels surrounding the imminent hanging of a notorious pirate. The Player characters are enlisted to explore the enigmatic cave system some locals refer to as the Caverns of the Dead god.

This 28 page adventure uses about thirteen pages to describe a cave/dungeon full of cultists who just LUV insects. It’s heart is in the right place with a decent amount of interactivity beyond stabbing, supported by a some weirdness and some good use of language in places. It’s lacking just a little in the setup vibe, but the major pitfall is layout nd the need for a HARD edit to bring the rooms in to better focus. Your highlighter is going to go a LONG way with this one.

First off, while listed as OSR, this is clearly a DCC adventure, down to Luck and other terminology. That’s not such a high hurdle, and I used to review many a DCC adventure before finding them a little linear. There’s nothing inherently linear in DCC though, and its nice to see a more traditional crawl trying to cross game system boundaries. 

The setup here has some interesting qualities. We’ve got a town of 3,000 people which has swelled to 4,000 for some festivities: an infamous pirate is about to be hanged. At the same time a group of teenagers has gone missing, including the son of a local magistrate. Did I fail to mention the new priests in town who are giving out food and items to the poor? The swelling of the towns population gives a decent enough pretext to why the town isnt looking for the teens; a riff on the old “the kings armies are engaged with a neighboring kingdom” thing. The hanging and town swell offer a nice slice of life to the adventure and are great examples of specificity leading to things that the DM can riff on to add local colour. The hooks, or perhaps “quest givers”, also have a decent mix, from the magistrate to the sheriff to a do-gooder to a local worried that HE’LL be blamed if the kids show up dead. A nice mix of chaos and town “factions” I guess you could call them. Beyond the verbosity of the town/background section, my only complaint here is the lack of a few more specific situations for the DM to riff on during play. Hirelings and rumours are well covered, but a few street scenes would have gone a long way to helping reinforce the chaos of the town swell, the jubilant and chaotic atmosphere of the hanging, etc. 

The caves are a relatively simple affair, in a mostly star layout on the map. Nice use of things on the map to lend information, like curtains and statues and the like, but noting lights and sounds on the map, as well as creatures, would save me the trouble of having to note them myself. Entry is through a hole with a rope, always a personal favorite of mine. Unrealistic, but fun! This also seems like a good place to note that the cultists inside don’t really have an order of battle. There is a general note that they will prepare for return expeditions and set traps, but nothing more beyond that. 

Interactivity inside is decent. We’ve got status and curtains and porculii to mess with. There’s a spinning gizmo, like a gem, in one room, and a smokey archway in another. Riddles are present, which are NOT a favorite of mine; I like my riddles a little more engrained into the adventure and more subtle than the old say the answer thing. But there’s no question it’s a classical element. Also present is a gem inside of a skull … that you feel a certain compulsion to swallow. I think the last time I saw a swallowed magic gem was in, what, Dungeon of the Bear? Wonderfully non-standard! You do get your fair share of stabbing here, cultists and bugs, but this leans heavy in to the non-standard OD&D vibe. I wouldn’t want to say it goes too far down that path, but there is a sense of wonder here and there that I generally only get from those OD&D centered adventures. 

Language use is generally good as well. It’s hidden, sometimes, in the verbosity of the entries, but you do really get the sense that a scene has been painted and/or situations have been brought to life. In one room, were you find captives, “The door here is barred. This darkened cavern reeks of the eye-watering smell of filth. A dozen gaunt, reeking individuals huddle here, shielding their eyes from your light as you fight back the urge to gag.” (There’s no real read-aloud here, in spite of the use of the word “you” in a couple of places. I’ll forgive it as poetic license.) The cavern REEKs. Eye-watering. Gaunt. Huddled. And then, with one of them, “wet, rattling breaths speak of imminent death.” Just a couple of words to really bring home an awful situation. The usual “captive are here” is done more with, and then a situation is introduced, tersely, and not elaborated upon. This is what specificity buys you. Not only a great mental image but also one that you can then riff on as a DM. And this is not a cherry picked example, the use of language can be startlingly good in many of the areas.

But I’m not going to recommend this. It’s because of the layout, formatting and editing. I want to give you a mental image. Imagine a full page of text that is all center justified. So you have both a wall of text issue and the center justified issue to contend with. Now, this is NOT what the adventure layout is doing, but I think it’s the closest mental image I can describe that relates to the issues. This is all a single column, which of course contributes to the issue. When a paragraph is a sentence or so long and it ends a word or three in to the newline then you get this weird effect that almost mirrors a center justify. Especially when combined with a CRIMINAL lack of blank lines to help separate thoughts and sections. Almost a complete lack of bolding, or other elements to help orient the reader and help them locate information. And then a certain verbosity. It’s not appears to be, or room histories or motivations or anything like that, except it is all of them, and more, contributing line after line in very small ways. Things that build up, word after word and sentence after sentence, combined with the lack of formatting and single column. 

This needs a REALLY hard edit to focus in without losing the specificity and vibrancy hinted at, combined with some small efforts in formatting, bolding, white space and so on to call out aspects of the rooms, combined with nearly ANY other layout style. Were that done this would be a pretty decent adventure. As if, though, you’re gonna need a box of highlighters. 

I am hopeful. The interactivity is decent and the language use, what I think is the hardest aspect of writing, is good. Layout and formatting and ruthless editing can be learned easily enough.

This is $9 at DriveThru. Alas, there is no preview. A good preview of a dungeon room or two gives potential buyers a chance to judge the adventure for themselves before purchasing.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/566897/caverns-of-the-dead-god?1892600

By Peter D Gray
Self Published
5e/OSR
Level ... 4?

Farmer Jebsom has a problem – half his farmhouse, along with all of his family fell into a sinkhole that appeared beneath his farm’s foundations.  Now he is desperate to get his wife and children back from the mysterious depths and is willing to give 20% of his farm to anyone succeeding in returning them to safety.

This seven page backstory uses one page to describe nine rooms in a tunnel complex full of bugs. A general overview with a lengthy backstory and terse tunnel chambers result in an IDEA for an adventure rather than an adventure proper.

I am less than thrilled with every aspect of this adventure. There is an extensive backstory here of a wizard noble dude, exiled, back, with a gang of like fifty doppelgangers, his revenge in getting ankhegs in to a village to disrupt the farms, and then his use of a giant burrowing monster to undermine a former rival farmers fields. You’re in the village to clear out an ankheg infestation. That, alone, seems weird. It’s all very nonchalant and no one seems to care much about rampaging monsters. But, whatever. Then farer bob runs in to the tavern noting that his wife and kid fell in when a large portion of his house collapsed in to a sinkhole. Again, no one seems to care much. There’s an off-hand comment that the village priest wants you to wait a day to go save them so that the farmer can recover enough to tell his tale. None of this makes any sense to me. The casual monster infestation that no one cares about. No one really caring about a member of the communities family being in trouble. The priest urging you to wait a day. This is not how people react. I get it, we’re hiring adventurers to solve our problem, but this immediately drags me out of immersion. Things would have gone much better with some local involved and framing this as a village crisis. They won’t even form a militia because the farmers don’t want their hands away. It’s just this super long backstory and irrelevant detail to set up this absurd situation that just results in “you’re hired to …” 

And then there’s a evil noble mage and his doppelganger gang. There’s a note that they are replacing people, but nothing more than that. Evil Dude gets a stat block and you find letters in the tunnel, and evidence, tying him to whats going on … but nothing more. No reactions. No evil dude lair. That’s it. The amount of backstory and time spent on him, and the gangers, would make it seem like this IS the adventure. But it’s not. Nothing is there.

The actual adventure is nine keys in a tunnel. This amount to “you enter a room and some bugs are there to attack you.” You can find the missing family. While YOU take between 4d4 and 8d10 damage from collapsing tunnels, they are ok. And, no details about what makes a tunnel collapse or anything. You can also find some dead doppelgangers with the letter from the evil noble. Yeah.

I find this so frustrating. At best you get an outline of things that could be going on. There is almost no specificity. The actual dungeon encounters are less interesting than Boggems, NO! From Legion of Gold. “Hey, heres this long backstory of stuff that could be happening. Now here’s nine rooms in some tunnels with bugs” 

I get it. I get the vision. But nothing in the adventure is supporting that vision. Not even this review. OSR. Pffft. 

This is $2.50 at DriveThru. The preview shows you the first two pages of baccktsory. Enjoy that.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569215/beneath-twin-pines-farm?1892600

By Fabricio Garcia
Kobold King
OSE
Level 3

The adventurers will face an ancient mage trying to free his soul from it’s bindings in his tomb. The group has 10 sessions to reach the tomb, where they can stop the ritual or join Kaeloreth’s quest to rein the region again. In the tenth session, Kaeloreth completes his ritual and now possesses a new body. He send his undead thralls to slaughter 3 Sylvandur population, each death gives him more power. As sessions progress, the common enemy will start to change from wild life and monsters to Kaeloreth’s undead soldiers.

This 93 page adventure uses nine pages to present a small trial dungeon. Whatever the intent was is lost in its incomprehensibleness.

This is an EASL adventure, and while the EASL is thick in this, I don’t think that’s the main problem, so I’m going to ignore it.

I don’t really know what to say about this. It’s a mess. It’s trying to present a small region with the central focus being a dungeon/tomb with ye olde “ancient dude trying to return to the world.” He’s in a tomb that is a simple “challenge dungeon” with a number of rooms in which you face “challenges”; my least favorite type of dungeon. There’s a timeline, based around adventuring sessions, with the concept of escalating stakes introduced for each session the party takes to complete the adventure, rather than a strictly daily countdown. 

I guess I should start with the format. Or, maybe, file type. It’s done in Obsidian, a markup tool. I downloaded the app and installed it, but still couldn’t get the files to open. It appears to have a rather steep learning curve. I THINK it’s just a system of hyperlinking. I think. There’s also a single column PDF that contains everything in the markup app, I think. But, even though I’m looking at the adventure in a non-optical manner (the PDF) I still don’t think that’s the issue. 

It’s just … abstracted? I don’t really know what to say except “a mess”, but that would imply it’s not organized. But I think it IS organized. It’s just not supporting anything. 

I THINK what is meant to be going on is that the party is charged with STOPPING THE EVIL and they end up in a small town. There they meet some NPCs and get mini-quests that forces them in to the region and then they get more information and find the tomb and stop the big bad. 

The best example I can cite to relate the issue is the mini-quests. At the end of the adventure is a list of NPC’s. One of the NPC’s has this in their description ”His son is late to return home. He went to the forest at morning (This happens on the first session). He start searching for his son on the second day.” [sic]  So, to put together the mini-quests you’re going to have to reference all of the NPC’s and what they want done and where they are. I don’t see how this is possible in gameplay, given their quantity. That means you’re going to have to essentially take so many notes that you would be rewriting the adventure. His kid, later in the NPC’s, has the description “Cerabino is lost inside the forest. He got distracted when he found Living Cave entrance. He can forage for berries and water but monsters can ambush and kill him. “ There’s no mention of the kid anywhere else, and certainly not in the living cave. So … you stick him in it? IE: you have to put together each of the mini-quests on your own. There IS no supporting information.

The living cave, proper, is procedurally generated. Roll a d12 and maybe get “6 Forgotten gear (CHA or attract the owner ghost) “ You gotta wander the cave till the DM rolls a a twelve so you can find the tomb entrance. And it changes every time, since it’s living and procedurally generated each time. This is tedium. And, again, not very well supported. One of the two central locations is essentially not described at all. 

Challenge dungeons, the main tomb, are their own problem. You know the whole “door slams shit and figure out what you are supposed to do” thing. And there’s no map. Well, there is one, but it’s not keyed (maybe that is fixed with the markup file?) And then, the big bad has a 4HD fireball he tosses. At level 3?! WHat is that, 14/7 damage? Ouchies. 

And the room description, what there are of them, are full of asides and backstory. “The manor don’t clean or fix itself inside this room. This was caused by a bad spell from Maliel – Corrupted Witch while she researched a way to preserve Nermanik – Human Mage’s body.” With victorian laundry lists of trivial contents and extensive room exists and the like. 

The rooms and descriptions, the dungeon and towns, the quests, the entire plot … it’s all abstracted. There’s no real summary of how the thing is supposed to work together. There’s no real support for any aspect of it, except perhaps the main dungeon, and even that is written almost like it’s a generic/universal adventure. It has abandoned all conventional aspects of layout and organization, but not replaced it with anything better. It’s as if the designer had not seen a published adventure before and didn’t know to do, but didn’t have an idea anyway on how to organize it. 

I’m open to this being an Obsidian issue, solved by it, but I don’t think so. The lack of a summary that makes sense, and the lack of support for the various areas just seems missing.

This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/567830/kaeloreth-s-tomb-mini-scenario-pdf-markdown-obsidian-ready?1892600

By Dan Collins, Paul Siegel
Wandering DMs
OSR
Levels 3-5

Long ago, a secretive cult promised salvation through sacred waters said to heal any affliction, wounds, curses, even madness. Pilgrims came from distant lands to seek their aid, hoping for a miracle beneath the cult’s solemn gaze. But the cult’s mercy was not freely given. Cloaked in silence and ritual, they judged each petitioner, granting grace only to the worthy. The rest were cast aside, their fates hidden beneath still waters and stone. Unicorn symbols adorned their vestments and sanctums-beacons of purity masking a far darker doctrine. The cult is gone now, or so the tales say. Yet the ruins remain, quiet but not empty. Some claim the waters still flow, and that the judgment of the faithful endures, waiting for those bold or desperate enough to seek it out.

This six page adventure uses two pages to describe eleven rooms in a small cavern complex that used to house a religious cult. It feels uninspired. As if encounters were placed just to have encounters. At least they kept it short. Ish.

Blah blah blah, old cult caves using a dyson map. This is an attempt to make a dungeon in about an hour on their podcast. I recall feeling like I didn’t hate an earlier entry so I wanted to see if, as things usually transpire, practice has made perfect. It has not. I’m going to go back after this review is finished and watch the episode where they write this dungeon. I think, perhaps, they may be tiring of the schtick? 

The Logos map they are using is small but packs a decent punch. This is mostly because of a river running through it with a couple of bridges over it. That leaves space for hidden rooms on the map, off the river, and all sorts of bridge shenanigans. This does not come to pass. There IS one hidden room off of a river, which contains a 12HD water elemental. The two bridge spots are essentially ignored, with one receiving a rickety trap door in the middle of it. That is all. This is opportunity wasted and I’m quite disappointed.

There is a group of lizard men present in one room. A Carrion Crawler in another. I guess a couple of zombies? This is not exactly, I think, the height of interactivity. I guess there’s a trap and a secret door and a kind of trick to the water elemental, but, it just feels like the rooms are plain. It doesn’t feel like a cave, or a cult temple. There’s not real build up, in room after room of some sort of vibe.

“Former chamber of the cultist’s ogre guard” the kick off to one of the rooms tells us. That’s just padding and the designers should know better. In anther place we’re told, of the Carrion Crawlers nest “Its former victim lies slumped on the floor.” Beyond the repeated use of “former”, I must note just how prosaic the writing is. I want some bloated corpses, eyes bugged out, maggots from the cavities. Or dried husk, etc. Instead “former victim” with no other words, positive or negative, loot or danger. Again and again and again we see opportunities squandered. No springboard to interactivity. No real evocative description. Just something tossed in with seemingly minimal effort. 

I will note the one place where things DO come together. It’s that fucking water elemental, the 12 HD one. Former guardian. Hiding in a little bend in the river that an uninquisitive party may never see because they must traverse the river instead of the cavern path. “a water elemental in the form of a mist that hovers low over the water. It will form into the shape of a surging unicorn and murder anyone that enters its watery domain.” In the form of a mist?! That’s fun! I’m sure everyone reading can understand the possibilities of that. And the writing! “And murder anyone who …” Ha! Not challenge. Not defend. Not any of those other bs words. MURDER. Fuck yeah man! You go! Not just a monster rolled and plopped in a room but a little thought went in to the mist and a little elan in the murder description. 

Otherwise … it’s just a little staid. It doesn’t feel inspired, or as if someone enjoyed writing it. 

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is not worthwhile. 🙁

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/568347/wdm06-dungeon-design-dash-6-diamond-pyramid-of-the-elemental-executioner?1892600

And while I’m at it, I don’t understand the love for Brideshead. It’s just people monologuing at Mr Ryder for fifteen minutes until he responds with a terse monosyllabic phrase like “Oh, yes? And then they monologue at him for another twenty minutes.