The Secret of the Wood of Dark Bough

Posted on January 18, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
The Secret of the Wood of Dark Bough
Footprints 20
R. N. Bailey
1e
Levels 3-5

… An angry mob rushed to arrest the suspected Ostenheim farmers. Eight men of that community were given a quick trial and found guilty. These men are now held in Alfandi. In five days’ time, they are to be executed for practicing black magic on their neighbors….

This 31 page adventure details a wilderness region, a small wilderness lair, and then a three level bullywug dungeon. It’s a real 1e dungeon, for better or ill, that is magazine formatted. So, you’ll get a kick in the balls trying to run it but it’s the real deal. A classic 1e adventure right out of 81.

ObInsult: Ah yes, the hardcore 1e gang. Where the height of game design and formatting was whatever Gary shit out in 1981. Alas, for us all, it was pretty good design …

So, the village of Bumfuck has had some crops fail. They blame the village of Asshattery and their black magic. They kidnap eight farmers from there and are executing them in a few days time. You learn of this and attempt mediation. In looking at the Bumfuck farms, you find some tracks, follow them in to the woods, find a siren in her lair and learn of a stolen magic cup, go back to town to confront the thief about the crop-withering cup only to learn that bullwugs in the swamp stole it … and set off to go get it back so as to provide an alternate theory and free the villagers. As a B/X five, I’d probably just kill everyone, but, we’re in “realistic” 1e land, so, we murder ourselves with labour (U1, biatches!) for 2000gp in treasure. Along the way we get a handful of farms to investigate, a handful of locations in the woods, a siren lair with a few roms, a swamp with a handful of locations, and a three level bullywug lair. 

There is a casual realism here that I greatly appreciate. The mob and fueding villages is very well done. Petty grievances, some jumping to conclusions about evidence, and so on make civil hands unclean. The villages, proper, are well done, with almost no shops. One has a Drink Hall instead f an inn, and you can all sleep in it for a cp. No private room bullshit here! The creatures, as enemies, and the locations extend this kind of realism. Not just things to stab, but also not a useless backstory and history garbage. 

This thing is TIGHT. I mentioned all of the locations, and, with that page count, you’ve got to expect that there’s a been tight job of writing/editing. You get a page of backstory, or so, but, other than that there’s almost no wasted space. None of this “appears to be” shit or integrated what used to be or motivations in the room descriptions. There are some spare words, you’re not getting a flavourless minimalism, but its realism without simulation and a focus on actual game play. Exactly the fuck the way an adventure should be written.

Interactivity here is … subtle. For the most part you’re following breadcrumbs, talking to folks, and stabbing things. Generally, the monsters know something and thus capturing and questioning works for the trail. There’s a shrine to maybe leave an offering in. Or, an underwater cave to discover and swim through. Mostly, this is going to be the party using all of their 1e abilities to overcome things that are at their level. We’re not talking an environment set up against the party, but rather a more natural, neutral environment, with the associated interactivity. 

Decent NPC’s, with their descriptions focused on play rather than backstory. A great little timeline of local events that take place, and where a roving band of miscreants is at any one time, for the party to perhaps stumble upon. The lack of an order of battle for the bullywugs, in their lair, is a somewhat obvious miss. I guess they get what they deserve then 😉

Right now out 1e friends are masturbating furiously over this. And they will continue to do so in spite of …

This is magazine formatted. Magazine formatting is something I discovered in my Dungeon Magazine odyssey. Basically, you’re getting two column, with some bolding. Overall the formatting options appear (for magazine reasons?) to be quite limited when things appear in that medium. This severely limits the possibilities for bringing clarity and scanability to an adventure … something high up on my list. (And, everyone else’s, since “they are hard to run” is the number one complaint, year after year, about prepublished adventures.) This seems to be a common problem. Or, at least, a refusal to deviate from a house style. That’s a miss. The long form paragraph is not the end all and be all of formatting. It can absolutely work, but, also, it is almost certainly not going to work if you don’t work the entries hard with editing and/or keep the entries short. And, all that 1e realism is NOT contributing to keeping the entries short.

We’ve traded evocative writing for gygaxian naturalism. Both can work, although I find High Gygaxian a little distant. The writing here, especially for the descriptions, can be very hit or miss for that reason. “Steady drips of water fall from the ceiling, a few inches of foamy water cover the floor, and flaky, white mold grows on the walls.” I find the overall effect here to be a bit distancing, or coldly written, but steady drips, format water, and flaky white mold are all hitting exactly what they should be. So, not rock star but also not bad at all. But then we get to “In the center of this cave sits a 3’x3’x3’ flat-topped chest of iron.” This is not exactly the best room description ever written. There’s this steady cadence, both in the descriptions and in the DM text, of 1e descriptive elements. Exact dimensions. And dear god, if I have to read “If there is a ranger or druid in the party then the tracks …” one more time I’m gonna have a head burst. “This cavern has a 15; high ceiling and a strong musty smell” is not going to do it for me. 

Which, again, leads to the primary interactivity in this adventure: fucking up dudes. Because, if you’re playing 1e like it’s 4e, then you’ve got enough information to fuck up the dudes present. 

Thus, it ain’t cutting it for me. I could debate the merits of high 1E for a long time. I believe, though, that if you are in to high 1E then I’ve already told you enough that you’re going to check this out. For everyone else … there are other fish in the sea.

Yo, free at Dragonsfoot. You should absolutely check out their magazine, Footprints, at least once in your life, if only to see how the other half lives.

https://www.dragonsfoot.org/php4/archive.php?sectioninit=FT&fileid=377

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 29 Comments

Aberrant Reflections

Posted on January 16, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By directsun
Self Published
B/X
Levels 1-4

At the bottom of an ancient temple, beyond the mirror’s edge, lies the spot where reality was sundered. Fortune and power await those who learn its secrets. A fate worse than death is reserved for those who fail. You’ve come to plunder the temple between worlds and gaze into its ABERRANT REFLECTIONS.

This 44 page digest adventure features a mirror themed dungeon with about 22 rooms. It IS a puzzle dungeon but feels less like one than the ham-handed ones. The writing could be beefed up quite a bit to make it more evocative. This is a decent dungeon, especially as puzzle dungeons go.

This is a mirror dungeon. Meaning that there are mirrors in the dungeon that reflect a second dungeon, with the same basic layout as the first. You can, if you figure it out, pass through the mirrors to manipulate the other environment … such as the big honking room near the entrance stuffed full of treasure! Nice job that … by putting the treasure room up front, albeit in the mirror universe, you get the players interest fast and they pretty quickly learn their mission: figure out those fucking mirrors so they can get the treasure. Thus, I’m all on board with the core conceit. It’s just a dungeon. With another dungeon behind it and a motivation for reaching it. An appeal to the players, rather than the characters, is almost always going to be a good thing and it’s done here.

The map supports the mirror play by overlaying some purple text on to the “normal” map; the purple stuff representing the things that are different in the mirror-verse. The text of the adventure continues this with the rooms having both traditional text and then also purple text to handle the mirror universe things. It’s simple and effective and the purple is easy to read. The lack of numbers on the map raised some eyebrows, but, it is cross-referenced to the page the room is on, one room per page, so, the page numbers essentially serve as a room number … no harm no foul.

Formatting is decent, with bullets, bolding  and whitespace and boxes/shading. And, of course, the purple text clearly designating the mirror room. Interactivity, likewise, with the core puzzle concept of entering and/or manipulating objects in the mirror dungeon. This is complimented by Marvin the Morose Rob^h^h^hgolem and creatures which come through from the other side … as well as a few Things type body horrors. There’s enough variety to keep the party on its toes but still engaged.

My main issue here is one that I frequently have and seldom mention: the quality of the descriptive writing. This is, as I’ve said in the part, what I consider to be the hardest part of writing, so I don’t like to make TOO much of it. But, when its lacking it tends to turn someone I might want to run, or something I am excited to run, in to something I am indifferent to run. And that is, essentially, what we have here. 

Each room starts with a little bit of text, a kind of overview that could be aimed at either the DM or at the players as read-aloud. For example “Mirrors flank a black curtain that conceals the passage north. At the west end of the hallway sits an empty doorframe.” Bolded things have section heading down below, but, looking at the text proper, as an evocative description … meh. Ok. It is, I guess. It’s not bad, but, also, it’s not very evocative, I guess? Perhaps a little too grounded in the facts of the situation rather than the feelings of a situation (I just saw Bodies Bodies Bodies … Feelings are Facts!) 

I’m not altogether bored by descriptions like “A grand mirror towers over a stone altar, bathing it in green light.” as an initial room description. Grand, tower, bathing … and pale green light is always a win. But it is lacking just a little more. Maybe the context of the room? Dust motes? A barrenness by which the mirror and light/altar is thus the highlight? It’s not bad, but it’s not a stunning example of writing either. 

And, I guess, that’s got to be good enough. This is a decent adventure. It’s not doing anything wrong. Maybe a bit rough for level 1s, with a bunch of 3 and 4HD baddies, but as puzzle dungeons go its a pretty decent. The puzzles are integrated, not isolated funhouse rooms. It feels like a real place. Or, at least, the heightened reality of a “Real” dungeon in D&D. The concept, formatting, and interactivity are good and the writing not bad at all.

“Bryce, you’re not excited.” Nope. I’m not. I’m gonna Best this, because I think it deserves it. But, a print copy isn’t going on my bookshelf. Not that you fuckwits give a damn. Directsun is, however, on the short list of people to look out for when new adventures appear by them.

This is $8 at DriveThru. You getting all 44 pages in the preview. Rock on man! Directsun knows the score!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/419533/Aberrant-Reflections?1892600

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

Welcome to the Valley

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Skeeter Green
Skeeter Green Productions
S&W
Level 1

The Valley Out of Time is a series of ‘zine-sized adventures from SGP. This valley can be placed in any ongoing campaign, and is set in the “Neanderthal Period” of development. Huge monsters – both dinosaurs and otherwise – and devolved humanoids plague the area, and only the hardiest of adventurers will prevail! This series of adventures borrows heavily from classic dinosaur art, books, and movies; if you’ve ever seen a classic Frank Frazetta or Roy Krenkel painting, or read or watched The Land that Time Forgot, The Lost World, Journey to the Center of the Earth, One Million Years B.C., The Flintstones, any stop-motion film from Ray Harryhausen, etc., you’re going to feel right at home.

This twenty page digest adventure has three encounters in it. With a fuck ton of 4HD and *HD combatants. At level one. In long form paragraph form. I wish I had this chutzpah.

Twenty pages. Three encounters. You see a tribe of cavemen. A giant monitor lizard attacks the cavemen. They move camp and a giant snake attacks. Welcome to $5 worth of value, folks!

The caveman thing takes, like four pages or so. See the cavemen. And then get a run down of what they do if you approach. Or attack them. They’re a tribe of cavemen. That’s what the four pages say. And they attack you if you are hostile. There’s a staggering fucking leap of logic. There is NOTHING in those pages that any fuckwit on earth would not do if you said “tribe of cavemen.” No little vignettes. No personalities. No curious kid. Just a fucking tribe of cavemen. In four pages. 

And then a 8HD monitor lizard attacks. Then it’s followed by eight 3 HD raptors. For “Four to six characters of level 1–3 should find the encounters presented herein challenging but manageable.” Uh huh.

And, did I mention, that if you’re injured you get to make a save or get jungle rot. No spell recovery and all rolls at a -1. At level one. And if y ou wear armor you move at 25% movement speed because you are sure to fail one of the eight heat exhaustion rolls you make a day. At level one. 

The cavemen move camp after the lizard/raptor attack. On the way they get attacked by a 8HD snake. Oh, also, the cavemen are 4HD, so, good luck attacking them. 

Three encounters. Not first level. Nothing to them beyond what “cavemen” would most commonly imply. 

But, sure, it takes a lot of fucking words to get there. All laid out quite nicely in long paragraph form. Just read the entire thing. How many cavemen are at the party? Read all of the cavemen pages and then at the very bottom of it you’ll be told. Yeah you! Maybe you wanna give me $5 for this review? It has just as much value as this adventure. But, hey, it pulled in $8k in its kickstarter and has 100% 5 star reviews!

Happy fucking New Year.

This is $5 at DriveThru. There’s no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/391980/The-Valley-Out-of-Time–Welcome-to-the-Valley-SW?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 14 Comments

Eminence Luminous & Virgin Tenebrous

Posted on January 11, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Filip Gruszczynski
Self Published
OSE
Levels 5-7

The Eminence Luminous monastery has fallen, but so has the besieged forces. Now the holy site stands silent, surrounded by a sea of corpses. Undead abominations, ravenous scavengers and pagan fiends roam inside. Deep below lies the legendary vault, full of divine relics and unholy artifacts. Will you restore the convent to its former glory? Or will you rather plunder its riches?

This 103 page digest adventure features a monastery, its outbuildings and dungeons with maybe 120-130 rooms and about a dozen interconnected levels/areas. This is gonna get a Regerts because I think the room text is a bit long, the descriptions a bit uninspired, and the digest format wrong. But, also, dude gets it. This is a real site based adventure with good interactivity, of which there are few in spite of everyone claiming they just published one. He’s got his shit together in this adventure.

Usually I like to talkIt’s 9 about nice things and then talk flaws. My back hurts and I’m not in that mood. But know you, gentle reader, this one may be worth you checking out. Now, excuse me while I go on a meaningless rant.

Digest format sucks shit. I know, people like it. It’s currently the rage “Zine zine zine!” is all you hear. I don’t know what the fuck you people think a zine is, but it aint what I think it is. A zine aint a fucking format. That’s a fucking digest. A zine is a fucking magazine. Multiple things in it. Yeah, tey look digest, usually, because you an photocopy it and fold the 8.5×11 in half … hence the digest format. Digest is not, however, a good format to publish your fucking adventure in, OSE to the contrary. Or, rather, it is GENERALLY not the correct format.

When you’re working with a large work, like this adventure is, I think you need to return to more traditional size. This is, in many ways, a very hard statement for me to make. In so many of the judgments I pronounce, it’s not really a binary statement. The decision to go digest on a large dungeon doesn’t make or break the adventure. It’s all a spectrum. Going digest may push your adventure a few “usability” percentage points in the wrong direction, if you don’t handle things correctly. And, thusly, saying “digest was wrong” is more of a “well, I think it was a wrong decision and if you had gone standard format then the rest of the decisions you made in this area may have presented better and perhaps to the point where I no longer have comprehension issues or at least not to the point where I feel like I need to write a lengthy section on it and/or start a review by commenting on it.” But, it’s easier to say that “digest was wrong.” 

On top of everything, the thing uses spreads. So, we’re back to traditional formatting, albeit landscape. And, it’s a fucking PDF product. Realistically, it’s only every GOING to be a PDF product. Almost no one is going to print this. Or buy a printed copy if/when one becomes available. I don’t mean to sound like an ass, but, rather, the number of PDF copies is going to GREATLY outnumber print copies. You don’t gotta hyperlink the fucker, but, at least don’t cripple the medium that everyone is going to be using. You’re not using a photocopier. I’m not printing this out. Why the fuck is it digest format?

And this exacerbates the problems with the text. The font is generous and the descriptions/DM text are not exactly svelt. This, in digest format, for a large number of rooms, give the impression of one room per column, even if it may be a little more than that. Your eye is travelling half the page to pick up information. This is not the way to good comprehension.

And, while it pains me to say this, I live in the United States. Some people do not. Life is not fair. And, I think, this is an EASL adventure and I’m about to rag on it for being so. The text here is not bad. The text here is not GOOD though. I mean, it’s adequate./ And, in many ways, because of that, above average. But, also, it comes off a bit staid in a way that it shouldn’t. There should be energy here tha tisn’t. And it’s not, I think, for a lack of trying. Here’s one of the better attempts: “ The sweet smell of honey mixes with the putrid stench of rotten flesh. Floors and ruined furniture are lined with sticky, pinkish resin. The air vibrates with frenzied buzzing.” This follows the guidelines. (Which, I suspect, is why I think its doing a decent job) But, also, it’s a little lifeless? It’s a little … I don’t know. Antiseptic? And a lot of the text is like this. 

Which is weird because dude clearly has it going on. In the “I don’t like your bullshit setting” DM offset box, it startswith “You break my heart, but that’s OK …” and then gives some more neutral setting advice. That’s the kind of aside I love. And the fucking wanderers are great. They take a sentence or two each and are full of fucking life. Really really strong situations that DO come to life. 

And this energy in the wanderers extends to the general interactitivy of the adventure. The thing is stuffed full of it. The maps has multiple level entrances everywhere. Very little gimping going on (I think. There’s a lot of undead in this adventure, especially low level undead, and the “turning” special rules are unclear to me … perhaps the only section in the adventure that IS unclear. Which is a shame for something so important.) Someg level/area interconnections everywhere. Move a statue for a hatch underneath. Go down a well. Its all there. And the magic items tend to be great ones. The setting here is a little LotFP, so, we get, as a treasure The WORD Of GOD. It’s a Wish. Fucking perfect. And the other magic items, both traditional and not, and pretty well done also. A pair of magic dice … that let you reroll dice. That’s a little meta, enough to make my brain hurt ? Mundane treasure, to level, feels light to me. Especially at this level.

There are little misses, here and there. A fuckwit “your greatest sin attacks you” thing. It could use  A LOT more cross-references. Undead that you could interact with (to the point of joining your party) that could use a word or two of personality more. Or at all. 

But the core of this is strong. A strong, multi area environment to explore. Good map connections. A great degree of interactivity. And descriptions (and formatting) that are trying. You can see that. And they are not BAD.

But, also, it’s a little lifeless and, in looking at the layout/digest/text density issues … I’m not sure I would pick this one up and actually use it. 

Which is a shame. There’s a lot to like here. A LOT. Filip deserves better than me.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. It shows you lots of rooms, so it’s a good preview. Room F10, on the first page, stretches across three pages and four columns. G2 on preview page five is also a good example of density.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/420549/Eminence-Luminous–Virgin-Tenebrous?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | 10 Comments

The Beast of Borgenwold

Posted on January 9, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Harry Menear
Self Published
OSE
Levels 1-3

STRANGENESS AND TERROR FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!  Borgenwold is cursed, they say. Cursed by pride and greed to cower in fear of the past. A fell monstrosity from beyond the grave has risen to devour this town and all who dwell here.  

This 61 page exercise in pretension has a fourteen room dungeon. It shows some promise, in specificity, but lacks interactivity and the designer has their head so far up their Layout Ass that they ruin any hope of usability. It’s as if it were a kickstarter for a one page dungeon with four rooms, and all the stretch goals added things … but not to the dungeon and not actually usable. Just shit like “what color is the mayors hat back in town?” tables.

Some dude in town hires you to go to his moms tomb and bring back some priceless treasures for him. He’ll pay you 500gp per treasure recovered. Why you’re giving this shit to him, instead of just keeping it for yourself, is beyond me. He owes a loanshark and will be gone in a week anyway, if you don’t give the loot to him, so might as well take it. Speaking of the loanshark … he’s set up a big bad wolf … but has no stats. I assume that means he has 2HP and we stab him and take his shit. He’s got no bodyguards mentioned, when the text goes out of its way to mention bodyguards for everyone else. I assume this means the adventure was not playtested but a variety of other groups. Oh, yeah, did I mention the hooks and timeline don’t match up?
Weve not gotten a shipment for a couple of months now …” while the issues have been going on for a few weeks. 

So, look, this is going to be a theme with this review. The adventure is pretty much crap. There is some high points with the specificity involved, which shows a good deal of promise, but just about everything surrounding that is shit. But, you don’t really KNOW it’s crap just by taking a glance at it. 

And let’s talk about that. It looks niiiiicccccce! Ooo, look at that cover! Two page spreads! Nice art! And, hey, check out that fucking layout! Pretty artsy! Fuck me man, let’s put that fucking thing on the coffee table, am I right? (A reproduction of the wenge table in the Japanese embassy.) Oh course, it’s absolute shit.

The same fucking problem we always have with this art house garbage. The morons get a hardon over their layout. Their fancy fonts. Their background images. How they mimic some cutout style and put the tables at odd angles. The tables that take up an entire page. OOooo, look, a faux gothic style of font! Text that runs at an angle! Fucking idiots. I’m am so fucking done with their bullshit. If you don’t want people to run it then just label the fucking thing as a coffee table book and be done with it. Bt, ohhhh, noooo, no one will buy it if you label it like that, right? They want a nice looking book. Who the fuck said it … the secret to success is to pay for art and layout and have a print fucking version. That’s how you make bank. That’s what the fucking idiots buy. But, also, you are abandoning the core feature. It’s like buying a gorgeous new PC case … that’s completely sealed. You’re failing at the primary purpose. The fucking thing is a monstrosity to read. You can’t fucking follow it. It’s like almost every fucking choice was made to look pretty rather than to contribute to usability. And in this case I mean legibility. You’re fucking brain hurts to look at this. You can’t scan it quickly. The fucking main font, the use of the bold font, the off center text. The fucking gothic font. SHadow boxes and background images. It’s a fucking nightmare. Oh, sure, looks pretty. 

And, while I’m on a I Can’t Fucking Stand This roll, let’s talk about the core of the adventure. A fourteen room dungeon. Everything else in this is essentially padding. And, hey, I don’t mind a little local colour. I love it in fact. But the main adventure is the fucking dungeon. Fourteen rooms. Sixty pages. More on the shit-ass dungeon later.

What do you get? How about a table to describe the local hunters? You see, there’s some side shit (which is tangled up in the main quest.) The titular (heheh) beast is an undead manticore, taxidermied. There are some hunters about. You get a table to make up some hunters. EVen though they don’t really play much of a part in the adventure. They are hardly mentioned. ALso, there is not one table but like four. On four separate pages. That you get to roll on to make one up. How’s that for usability?

No? It’s not? But, hey, one table per page lets you so some funky layout shit! I mean, fuck you and actually running the thing. Otherwise we’d put all four tables on one page. Or, JUST DETAIL A FEW OF THEM IN THE FUCKIGN APPENDIX. People don’t understand what random is for. 

There’s some other shit hanging around in this. Some crazy goblins described over seven pages. The sum total osf which is unpretentious is “Small, cramped passages — too small for anyone but children and halflings to move about. Goblin eyes shine like stars in the torchlight.” That’s your goblin lair description. But, hey, we did get to masturbate over all of those freaky deaky goblin tables that take up the rest of the pages, right? 

There’s a hex map. It serves no purpose and is not linked to the text. Therefore it’s not a map. It’s an art piece. 

And the dungeon? It’s trying to use the OSE format but it fucks it up because because it dopesn’t know what is important. The idea is a short little description with bolded words that expanded upon. But this thing is all over the place in what it thinks is important. Thus, you’ll be readying the entire description to relate some bits to the party. This stands in direct opposition to what the OSE format is trying to do, when implemented correctly. Summary first. Or important things first. Or some way for the DM to figure out those things first. And, ultimately, the dungeon is just about stabbing shit. Stab stab stab. Stab stab stab. Almost no interactivity beyond this most basic of type. Enjoy your stabbing of 6HD creatures that are undead and immune to everything but fire and silver and magic. In your level one adventure.

The fucking thing looks like an adventure that someone has sunk money in to, and thus will be good. But it’s all flash.

It’s got some decent specificity. Good even. The lady that runs the tavern does so “with her two knucklehead sons.” Perfect! That communicates a lot! Of a magic hunting horn “The horn vibrates with raw magic; its makes your hand numb and your teeth hurt just holding it, like gripping a live wire.” That’s a magic magic item description! You know you’ve got something! Some commentary on some magic ‘godling’ fish says “If you eat enough of a gods children, you are eventually deemed a worthy addition to the family.” Absolutely! That’s one way of becoming a god/godling! It makes perfect sense and jives with all mythology ever. 

And, check out this terrific description “[…] bodies of villagers, merchants, hunters, guards — brutally, gleefully rent by claw and tooth. Hoisted into the trees, impaled upon pine limbs; a grisly larder. The air is putrid, a wall of sweet death smashing against the nose. Rotten corpse fluids run rivulets down tree bark. Flies swarm and buzz in clouds.” Fuck yeah man! Good description! So the specificity required to have a good description, to write a terse description that conveys overloaded meaning exponentially multiplied in a way that word count would not imply, os absolutely there. When the designer chooses to. In a dungeon room? No way. Hanging ut on its own somewhere, apart from the dungeon. Yup! 

“All the bestial heads mounted on the tomb’s walls animate, roaring, bleating, and wailing as one of the rooms’ animals come to life and another hunt begins.” Absofuckinglutly! Now, but ina room fucking description that matches. Trim yor fucking text. Organize it so that the most important shit is up top, and actually give us some descriptions of the situation, or a way to ferret it out to relate it to the DM. And take a chill pill when it comes to the fucking layout. Jesus, man. Make it fucking legible. The main thing is the fucking dungeon. Agonize over the fucking thing. Beat yourself over the writing. Then, you can pad out the region and town and npc’s and shit. 

(And, note, I’m not EVEN bitching about the disconnect between the hook, town, manticore, and adventure. I don’t fucking care. This is a bridge too far for 99.99% of designers, so I’m not going to beat someone up over it.)

The cottage industry continues. Layout dudes doing layout adventure bought by other layout dudes. But, he is not a ninja.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. The first six pages. So, one actual page of adventure timeline. IE: worthless for making a purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/410351/The-Beast-of-Borgenwold?1892600

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

The Witch, The Shepherd, His Goats and their Daughter

Posted on January 7, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By James Mishler, Jodi Moran-Mishler
James  Mishler Games
Shadowdark
Levels 1-2

Help the Shepherd find his Goats and Daughter who have been kidnapped by the Witch of the Woods. The woods are home to all manner of strange, fearsome, and fey monsters… not to mention the witch!

This twenty page adventure, with a fairy tale vibe, has the party exploring a wood with twelve locations to bring back a dudes daughter and goats and kill the witch responsible. Chill vibes but padded to all fuck and back. And you know what we say at tenfootpole: “Are you a fucking masterpiece? No? Then you better get your shit together if you want me to run it.”

It’s the day after Christmas and Sants brought me some Vegamite and olives stuffed with anchovies, in my stocking. So that’s breakfast. Along with an IPA. And this thing.Later today I’ll be making a suit out of garbage bags, buying thirty bottles of champagne and reading the Wizard of the Crow. So, you know, D&D will definitely NOT be the highlight of the day. Because of this.

We’re pretty close here. It’s got a vibe, brining a good fairy tale thing to the party. Shepherd lives on the edge of a BIG FOREST in a little cottage. His goats have been stolen by the witch of the woods, along with his daughter. You get 5gp per goat returned and 50 for the kid. (Who’s 19.) So close. Dude is a miser and cold-hearted, which is the source of all the troubles for him. I’d change it to 5gp per goat, and another 5gp for the kid. But, whatever. And, the kid is 19? Nahhhh, she’s fucking sixteen. See, dude made a deal with the witch, in exchange for a magic goat hed give her the kid at 16. But he didn’t. Do the witch plotted for three years for revenge? Nah. Make her 16. And keep the rest the same, I guess. Cause the kid hates dad also, and has been taught witchcraft by the witch and is in on ot. IE: some elaborate revenge plot going on here by these two. Fuck if I know man  … I guess they want to turn dad in to a goat and have some “put the amulet around his neck” thing going on. This part makes little sense. I get that you want the main witch to disguise herself as a black goat, very VVitch. But we’re straining here.

Otherwise, chill vibes in this one. A dwarf trapped in a fairy circle, complete with bird nests growing on him. A goat on a hill that won’t come down. A goat on a log in a pond. Giant goats next to a goat giant. A harpy … with the head of a goat. It’s all very fairy tale. 

One page per encounter. And it’s all padded out to fuck and back. 

“The Treasure Tree is a place where, long ago, some dwarves hid a BURIED TREASURE they won from some trolls. They buried it with many runes and curses against it being found and stolen… then they forget about it. Over the centuries the runes and curses came to life, animating the soil around the chest of treasure, creating a TREASURE GUARDIAN. Recently an adventurer found a map to the long-lost treasure for him, the Treasure Guardian overwhelmed him and his bones now grace the form of the guardian – as does the recently deceased body of a goat!d has tried to recover it. “ That was about 80% of the description of this location … and it has nothing gameable in it. History. What was. No description of what we’re looking at. No idea what to do, as a DM. 

It’s not until paragraph three that get one sentence “The chest is half unburied, with the shovel of the adventurer currently stuck in the body of the guardian.” That’s it. That’s your description. There’s another paragraph that has another description of the history of something in a manner that cant be used, also.

This is a classic “read it” adventure. It’s written to be read. You can’t use it during play without some serious time with a highlighter and note taking. The focus of the writing has to be on the DM using it at at the table. It is almost always the case that how the situation happened is not interesting for gameplay, and especially not so at he start of a description. We don’t dig through three paragraphs of useless info when the party enters the room. WWe need the data, now, to related to them. 

This don’t do that.

And I got other adventures to run that do.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. More than enough to see the actual encounters. Good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/419475/The-Witch-the-Shepherd-His-Goats-and-Their-Daughter-A-Shadowdark-Adventure?1892600

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

The Honest and Plain Village of Scio

Posted on January 5, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 

By G Edward Patterson III
The Skull as a Complete Gentleman Company
S&W
Levels 1-4

This 73 page booklet describes a town and then also a small, dozen-ish room dungeon. The town is absurd, in the best way possible for D&D. Idiosyncratic and full of things to amuse yourself with between dungeoncrawls. The dungeon is fine, turning in tone a bit more serious, as it should be. And, everything is ruined because the thing is unusable because the designer decided to fill the entire fucking with a selection of hard to read fonts. A great supplement, that is unusable.

We’re gonna cover this FUCKING FONT ISSUE. I can’t fucking stand this shit. “Ooo, Bryce cares too much about usability and not enough about design.” Yeah, fuck you man. Look, I’ve only reviewed a small percentage of adventures released over the last few years. And yet there are at least a hundred on my Best of list. You could play these fucking things for the rest of your fucking miserable fucking lives. Why, on gods green earth, would I EVER torture myself in order to run something  that I have to fucking flagellate myself to fucking use? THE NUMBER ONE FUCKING COMPLAINT OF ADVENTURES IS THAT THEY ARE HARD TO USE. Don’t be a fucking idiot and make your fucking adventure hard to use. 

So, this thing is trying for some product image of some branding “the skull as a complete gentleman company” or some shit. And thus the designer has deigned to fill the fucking thing with some unusual font selections. Some kind of gothic cursive? Illuminated manuscript? I don’t fucking know. “Fucking Illegible” is what it shows up as in Word. So, the main body of the text, being the most legible, just has a font that is full of curly-q endings and shit. Then the section headings have some kind of illuminated-ish or gothic font. This is fucking bad enough that it takes my brain more than a few seconds to struggle through figuring out what the fuck the heading says. Like which fucking business the following text describes. I had to actually copy/paste one section heading in to a text document so I could figure the fuck out what it fucking said. Summary sections, for a person, place,e tc are a few sentences long and are at the tope where they should be. In italics. Sorry, no, in the italics version of the fucking curly-q font. 

I’m not putting the fuck up with it. This thing is going on the trash heap, just like so many fucking others have. That’s right, all the fucking effort you put in to this causes it to end up in exactly the same fucking place as BloodyMage or Alfonso or the fucking rip off artists. The don’t give any fucks at all about your content … BECAUSE I CANT FUCKING DECIPHER IT!

That having been said, the content is magnificent. ?

The town is my kind of place. While I like my dungeons tending to the more serious side (with some absurdist situations) I like my towns and villages to tend towards the absurdist side of things with some serious situations. Ankh Morpork. A place full of hucksters and morons. With a rather fatalistic “adventurer” street people eat, drink, fuck, bet, and have a good time … because tomorrow they may die. And this city gets close to that.

It’s got absurdism. Like a flock of wild geese on the wanderers table. And a dude, in a separate location, called the goosemaster who “can speak a small amount of conversational goose.” (Note the use of the modifier “conversational” in that sentence. It adds a lot to the ambiance, yes? That’s good writing right there!”) There’s a table of petty businesses, which has as an entry “2. Carver of Knobs – ‘My true passion is shelving!’” That’s it. Absurd. And you can fucking run that fucking entry! Thats what I mean by the DM something to hang their fucking hat on!  The dude that sells sticks/kindling does so with a call of “The finest sticks in all of Ouaricon”. Disrespect him and he offers you an exclusive deal: a branch from the golden tiny-apple bush which has ultramundane properties that reveal themselves to the person who possess it.’ If you agree, he tells you to come to the same spot at midnight. Where you are attacked by the thugs he sells you out to because you are clearly fucking morons who need to be relieved of their fucking money. Absolfuckinglutly!

So, usability wise, it could use a few more cross-references and putting some page numbers on the “map” of the town. 

The dungeon at the end, a kind of point-crawl also-ran, has … fifteen rooms? I don’t know. They are not numbered and its laid out in a pointcrawl style, so one room tells you where to go fort the next room. With no fucking page references. We’re getting a little too fucking cute for our own fucking good here. Put some fucking numbers on it so I know if Mumified Garden is likely to be the page before or AFTER the page I’m currently fucking on. Otherwise, same shit. Too much italics. Fancy fucking font shit. Decent use of bullets and para breaks, and the interactivity is nice, if a little less exuberant. A little overemphasis on bring words, like Large and Small. But, it’s pretty much decent enough. At least it would e if it weren’t formatted/fonted in a cute way. Right now it’s just too busy. But, hey, lots and lots of interactivity, at least of the kind that fifteen room dungeons can have.

Monsters, in the appendix, are decent, but could use a little more emphasis on their descriptions, higher up in the text block. You want the visceral feel of a monster, and it’s lacking.

So, good example in this one of different text styles needed for different parts of an adventure. The town gets one thing. The dungeon needs another tone and style, and the monster descriptions yet something else. One size does not fit all in adventures … 

I’d slap a Best Of on this, except for the font crap. Yeah, even though it’s not an adventure and I’m a little suspect that the adventure is a little more “victorian gentleman” than I’d prefer. It’s a rocking town setting with a possibility of becoming the one I use most, up with Pembrocktonshire and the one I can never spell correctly. But, with that font shit and little finger arrows as bullets? Absolutely the fuck not. I don’t give a fuck about using your content if I can’t actually use your content.

This is $5 at DriveThru.Preview is sixteen pages, and is a good one. CHeck out page seven for some eye glazing action and page five for some great wanderers. 

There goes the last great American dynasty

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/419925/The-Honest-and-Plain-Village-of-Scio?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 18 Comments

Lamia Temple

Posted on January 2, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By DMDave, Ninetoes82
Self Published
5e
Level 3

To the locals, the Temple of Healing is a myth, a cautionary tale they tell their children. The legend says that the temple appeared one day on the edge of the desert. At first, the locals thought it was a mirage, as it was the miracle for which they had prayed: their city was in the grips of a horrific plague that had already decimated their population.

This ten page adventure features a symmetrical temple with sixteen rooms. It’s fucking dumb. Poor formatting,inconsistent descriptions, and a shitty implementation of the idea.

“Hey Bryce, is DMDave the Real Deal or just good at marketing or both?” Well, he’s got 4,500 patrons, so, we know he’s good at marketing. Dude is banking $12k a month, at least. Nice! He probably tells his visitors that he loves them, they are awesome and make him feel so special. He interacts with them. That’s how you build a fucking following. And, ultimately, how you make bank. No matter the quality of his work, I’m sure he’s outearned everyone in the OSR by a factor of at least ten. No single work produced can outearn $12k a month, month after month. So, you wanna make bank? Be a DMDave. You can stop reading now.

But, there is something else. In generations to come, will someone find the copper tablet-box and slip loose the ring-bolt made of bronze? Will they draw out the tablet of lais-lazuli and view the works cut therein? Will they be DMDaves? (The jokes on Shelley; .gov moved his monuments when the high dam was built!) No, obviously not. Baby needs to be a black sheep and a whore, outside of society. The cultural hero cannot be OF the culture. Build your walls, plant your orchands, cut your works in to the tablets; it’s as close as we’re getting to the bitter herbs … cause the snake always eats them first. But, fuck it, it’s something, right?! (This essay on selling out and mortality brought to you by Ramses 2, Patty Smith, and Melanie Martinez.)

Ten pages, fifteen rooms. The temple is symmetrical, which ALWAYS bodes poor;y. Symmetrical maps suck shit and are boring to play. There are brief exceptions for small symmetrical sections, especially when hinting at secret areas, but the entire thing symmetrical is boring

We got no hooks. That’s reserved for people who pay DM Dave. (Evidently this is the free version of the “you give me money” version.) So, ok, we don’t need that. We only bitch about hooks if they are actually included. Moving on, though, we see that detect magic doesn’t work inside the temple because everything is magic. We see, right here, that DMDave is not, actually, a good DM. DMDave insists that you experience the adventure the way he intended and fuck you for thinking otherwise. Get on the fucking railroad and follow the ‘Story’ tha the DM tells themselves is wonderful. We don’t do this. Not in the OSR, not in D&D, not in ANY RPG. The party makes the decisions. This is one of the key elements of ALL game play, I would assert. Otherwise it’s not a game, DMDave. The party earned the abilities. They get to use them. If you can’t write a level twenty murder mystery adventure because of SPeak with Dead then guess the fuck what? You’re not writing a level twenty murder mystery. 

Ok, so, back to the actual adventure. Lamia takes over a ruined temple. She cats a powerful illusion over everything to make it looks like its new and fresh and I guess people come to it now for some reason. I don’t know why. I assume she eats them or makes bank, but that’s not really covered well. JJust shit the fuck up and “experience” the game.

The writing sucks ass. “During it’s heydey this section of the gardens was used to grow and harvest verbs used in healing and potion-making.” Fucking wonderful. A history lesson. We don’t care about that. We care about actual gameable content. NOW. When the party enters the room. Whats going on NOW. The number of fuck ass adventure that still do this fucking shit, in this day and age, is fucking absurd. 

Ok, so, illusions everywhere, in where room. Covering every creature, just about. The description tells you what you see. Sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you just get the illusion description. Sometimes you get get the non-illusion description. I guess DMDave can’t actually be bothered to be consistent? Or his editor “The DMDave Team” can’t bebothered to actually do their jobs as editors? What ya doing here man? Pick a fucking path. 

We also get justifications for things, like a cursed pool. “And has been cursed by the lamia with powerful magic.” Wonderful. We already know its cursed. What did that sentence add? You don’t need to justify things. Just do it. Cogito. It is. Stop fucking justifying things in a fantasy fucking game. (Or, any RPG for that matter.)

The kitchen is real. Maybe? Illusions are supposed to cover everything, but it says the kitchen is really kept up? A couple of cooks make food. Its kind of gross. And they are guarded by two cocatrice. Seriously? As intelligent guards now? Are they covered in an illusion? What the fuck is going on?! 

Your reward is a +1 mace. So, you know, full of the majesty and wonder of a game that enables the imagination, this one. That’s the fucking point. The +1 mace, appearing in this, is full on representative of everything wrong. Ok, sure fuck wits, you can have a different opinion when the adventure is stuffed full. But, as a single magic item? This is the thing? A +1 mace? DMDave does NOT know what makes a good D&D game.

The formatting is all over the place. It’s just paragraph form writing, with no effort to enable the DM to run the adventure effectively at the table. We get some building, but that’s just “Trapped Room” or something. It’s an ineffectual format, as it has always been. To use it effectively you have to really focus the writing and that’s just beyond the casual form of writing, and production speed, that DMDave is going for.

Is it good? No. Is it bad? Yeah, kinda. Is he making bank? For sure. So, as a means to that its great! But, if you actually want a good D&D game? No. It’s just Kabuki, like the Pathfinder “most people just read them” shit. It enables the revenue model. Is he as cynical as Paizo? I hope not, so, I’m not going to give this one a Crook tag. But, also, DMDAve must, in some way, like the game. I hope he makes something that embodies that, rediscovering his love, rather than the production line stuff he seems to be crapping out.

This is free at his Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/file?h=75750960&i=12513972

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 37 Comments

Ear Notch Lair

Posted on December 31, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Pete Racek
Wolfhill Entertainment
1e
Level ?

Pffft, they’re just Goblins. What are all of you so Scared?

This fifteen page adventures features a twenty room cave dungeon full of goblins. And is shit, representing all that is wrong with the world.

I heard that Ear Notch Lair killed a man in Arkansas. And, also, that it burned down a house in Reno. And jaywalked in Burbank. And took the sucker from a babies mouth in Altair. Also, I heard it plays 4e.

Making humanoids great agin, right?1 Right on man! I mean, ignoring the divisive slogan,I can get behind some Yrchyn The Tyrant style lair! Let’s get some kobold action going baby! And not that Tuckers shit, but some hard nose fuckers with some iron pipes comeing for you!

Oh, wait. That’s not this adventure. This adventure has the party stating captured, only in rags. So, it’s making goblins scary again by taking away everyone’s spells and equipment and dressing you only in rags (why do that? Why not go full on FATAL?) So, you know, the designer didn’t even try at all.

It’s a jail break. You’ve been captured, off screen presumably, and now are manacled up in a cell. Make a HARD Muscle check to break loose! Ok, so, you know when it says “1st Edition” in what this is written for? Yeah, no, not so much. Life Points, Armour equivalent to Splint mail, a to hit equal to the most proficient person in the party … this is generic garbage that is actually 1e but too fucking afraid to put in some stats. Did I mention that one of the first sentences in the product is “There is No open game content in this product and no portion may be reproduced for any reason?” Hey, man, I just reproduced your Do Not Reproduce statement. Better sue the fuck out of me. Or, you could stop being a FUCKING IDIOT and take that shit out and just concentrate on actually writing an adventure using 1e stats. You know, what everyone else is doing? I know, I know, you’d have to actually concentrate on the adventure then and that’s _hard_. You put the fucking effort in to the fucking adventure. You put it in to making it good. You agonizing over the writing and the fucking encounters. You don’t put the fucking effort in to coming up with a synonym for Hit Points over fear of a fucking lawsuit. The main fucking thing is the main fucking thing. 

Ok, back to the adventure. I missed my HARD muscle check. So did everyone else. I guess our adventure is now over since we can’t escape? You don’t put the fucking adventure behind a gate. You don’t make the evenings play depend on a single roll. Jesus, it’s like the last ten years of adventure analysis doesn’t fucking exist at all. 

Oh, hey, hey … remember you start in just rags? You can use the goblins weapons, right?!!!! Except they all break on a 1 in 10 every time you use them. But, of course, that doesn’t happen to the goblins when THEY use them. Cause, you know, the designer is a cool dude. We don’t do adversarial play. 

Oh, lets see … the map. Pretty decent. Caves. Some larger caverns. Asream flowing through it and some water. Some flowstone steps. Some tunnels. I’m digging on it. There’s a color coded one that makes no sense ta all, and simple things lie the guard patrols are not shown on the map at all, but, hey, a designer can’t be expected to do their jobs, right? Why make it easy on the DM? It will, no doubt, build their fortitude, to just write a description of the patrol  instead of putting it on the map. 

Oh! Oh! The chief has 360gp! That’s your fucking treasure! ENjoy your 1e Gold=XP life experience you fucking morons! Hahahahahaha! And you thought you were playing D&D! Welcome to the hellish world of the DM/Designers creation where they toy with you for no reward! This is what people think D&D is. It’s sad.

Rooms have, like, a one sentence description in normal text and then a fuck ton of bolded text that is DM text. I most often mention italics, and long sections of it being hard to read, but that goes for any fancy font treatment. Short bolded words to call attention. A sentence. Maybe two. Not paragraphs. It makes it unreadable. 

There’s nothing here. Room notes on how to sneak past goblins, that take up a huge amount of text, per room. DM notes out the wazoo rather than shit going on for the DM to leverage. Meaning, advice to the DM on how to run the room rather than setting up a situation for the DM to run. 

It’s all just so depressing. A fifteen pages for twenty rooms. And the chiefs quarters near the entrance/exit, since that’s the goal, instead of deep inside, as it normally is. 

This is just another low effort entry to the long line of low effort entires that make up the D&D adventure market.

This is $1.50 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. Sir Hiss says “Suuuckkkkerrrrrr!”

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/417728/Ear-Notch-Lair?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 2 Comments

Shadow from the Stars

Posted on December 28, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Matt Kline
Creations' Edge Games
S&W
Levels 8-10

That covers got fuck all to o with the adventure, so ignore it.

An evil cult has taken over the Bronze Aerie Observatory. They’ve used the site’s main telescope to fulfill an ancient prophecy, calling their “Dark Lord” down from the stars. The being is trapped inside the observatory, for now.

This eighteen page adventure uses a few pages to describe a nine room observatory. No interactivity. No good descriptions. A paragraph formatting. It is just another shovelware title.

My experience, with OD&D, has been that once you reach level 6 you are pretty much bad asses. Sure, maybe a little fragile, but, also, you can pretty much nuke shit from orbit. People should be shitting themselves when you drop by for tea. So, this is a level 8-10 adventure. And it’s nothing more than a simple hack. Show up and stab some shit in a simple nine room dungeon. You are offered $5k to go to an observatory and collect some star charts. They give you five days rations and some horses if you don’t have them. So … you killed Great Cthulhu last week, are flying around in his severed upside down head, and defeated the monstrous deGrazzi Kingdoms last Tuesday. But, sure, do a fucking fetch quest for $5k. And, the treasure inside is so minimal as to be not really worth picking up. Maybe, I don’t know, $15k worth? Split? There’s no fucking XP there. But, sure, I’ll send in my level 10 dude. 

Oh, oh, and inside he can fight a bunch of 8HD cultists! Cause, now, level 8’s are just running around the fucking countryside! Not that any of them have names, but, whatever, right? We just needed something to stab and so “8HD cultists” made the pick. 

Interactivity, right? You stab shit. Then you stab some more shit. Then you stab some shit. Then you talk to the bad guy, a giant floating head. Maybe help him out, or, maybe stab him. Stab stab stab. Stab stab stab. … what fun we’re having … 

The writing sucks ass. The first line of the first room is “It looks as though a struggle recently occurred here.” That’s a conclusion. We don’t do conclusions in read-aloud. We describe things. That same room has all of the history of the dude that unlocks the doors. He’s not in the room. His history has NOTHING to do with the actual gameable content in the room. But it’s sure as fucked shoved the fuck in there, clogging shit up. Orm Redzig is stationed there during the day, folks. The key he uses to unlock the doors is currently missing. Not that the fucking party would know that, at the fuck all. 

Here’s a fun one. The room name is “Staff’s Quarters.”  The read-aloud describes a dorm. The first line of the DM notes is “This is the living quarters for the observatory’s staff. For serious?! I had no fucking idea! It’s just padding. It’s the repeated use of the same information. Multiple rooms read-aloud starts with “This room serves as the observatory’s blah blah blah” Exact words! 

This is just shovelware. It mimics the form of an adventure but has very little to do with one. There is no interactivity. There are no evocative descriptions. There is not useful formatting, everything just appearing in long multiple paragraph form. It is the most simple adventure possible. Barely one step removed from a minimally keyed dungeon, except it’s just got more words. 

Shovel it out man! Shove. It. Out.

This is $1.50 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages. You get to see some wandering monsters on the way to the observatory. Shit ass preview since its show sus nothing of the core.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/418665/Shadow-from-the-Stars-A-Swords–Wizardry-MiniDungeon?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 10 Comments