tenfootpole.org

By Stephen Grodzicki
Pickpocket Press
OSR
No Levels

Armed with this compilation, filling your sandbox with small – medium sized adventures has never been easier. Browse the collection, throw out a few hooks, and let the players bite where they may. Whichever direction they take, you’ll be ready to handle it with aplomb.

This 245(!) page volume compiles 22 of the adventures released by the designer. As with all compilations, it can be hit or miss. Themes emerge, with great wanderer encounters and room descriptions that need trimmed with the writing beefed up to be more evocative. This work, in particular, has more than a few “gimmick” adventures. I don’t know that I would ever buy a compilation?

Yeah yeah, it says “framework” and not “adventure.” But I think they are adventures, not frameworks, so I’m reviewing them like adventures.

Two of the works in this, Fane of the Frog God and Whitestone Tower, have been previously reviewed by me. Go check them out if you want a more in-depth covering of the adventures. They are decent enough reviews of decent enough adventures and the commentary there holds well for this volume.  I’m going to do a bad job in this review.

I’d like to cover two highlights of the adventures: the art and the wanderers. I seldom comment on art; I find most art in adventures worthless. Ideally, it would compliment the adventure, helping to bring it to life, as everything in an adventure should. The art credits in this are all over the place, but, there are some highlights. The monster art tends to be quite good, really bringing them to life. It does what good art should, helping bring the adventure to life for the DM, contributing to the evocative nature aspect of the adventure needed for the DM to convey things effectively to the players. To a lesser extent  the “general scene” art does this as well in this collection. Ruins, a tree with a skeleton on it … it helps convey a mood and they range from ok to excellent. The rest of the art tends to be the throw away stuff you see in every adventure. 

The designers wanderer tables are pretty fcking good as well. Soldiers shooting dice in an alley, An injured bear near death and not really a fighter. A beggar, getting a chamberpot dumped on his head. Even a stray cat encounter is a good one here. The energy in these little vignettes are something that I wish would also be found in the designers actual rooms/encounters. 

There are bits and pieces of other things I could talk about. NPC descriptions tend to be short and relatively good, following the three word system. In one adventure there’s a throw-away line about being hired by The Crone of Sumptown, and in another your shadows slip away from you … letting you know that things are about to get weird. These little bits and pieces, details and specificity, do wonders to bring an adventure to life. Most designers don’t come anywhere near this, and this designer sprinkles them in but a little too sparsely. 

The issue with these s that tend to be wordy. The individual rooms and encounters blow up the word count, for no good reason. In fact, The evocative writing seems to go down, quite a bit, when the rooms and encounters appear. “The face of the fortress is carved from the

mountainside, expertly cut and fashioned by the dwarven masons of old.” This is the entrance to a dungeon. It’s boring. It’s written like we’re reading a novel or series guidelines. There’s nothing useful about this description at all, for running the adventure at the table. It’s just padding. Parts of the adventures have some good bits to them. You can see them in descriptions like this one: “The tree at the centre has a skeleton nailed to it, wooden stakes hammered into the hands and forearms pinning it upright. Over time, vines have grown up around the bones, further securing them in place.” That description could be better, but its also supplemented by an good art piece. There’s this padding, and an abstraction of detail. A use of boring adjectives and adverbs, quite noticeable in the rooms proper. There are two issues here: the need to prune back the padding and the need to amp up the evocative nature of the descriptions. I will fully admit that evocative writing is hard … the hardest part of adventure design, I think. But it should be possible to prune these descriptions way back and get rid of the fluff that detracts from the good bits.

Collections are rough, because of the mish mash of adventures. This one seems particularly full of idiosyncratic adventures. One in which you play the monsters. A fey picks on the party. A zero level adventure. A roman gladiator/chariot racing one, a gang war hiring, a rooftop chase. There are some delights to be held though, or, perhaps, some better than others. An adventure involving a missing orphan and a town investigation, a couple of adventures sprinkled with the more alien of the D&D creatures … though eaters and the like. And a lot of fucking adventures where the party gets hired to escort someone to explore something. I guess its inevitable, when you’re producing so much, so reach a bit in the easy bucket. 

I’m not a fan of the abstracted treasure used in these. “Roll twice on the moderate valuables table.” This is not the evocative treasure that appeals to the PLAYERS that I’m looking for. The designer does the work. That’s the rule. If I did the work then we wouldn’t need the designer.

Cultists in Crows Keep, Folds Between Worlds, Red Moon Harvest … these are some of the more appealing ones to me. Mostly because they break away from the “Stark Dwarven Halls” that are impossible to do well … figuratively or literal stark dwarven halls, that is … 😉

This is $20 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages. You get to see an overview of the adventures and part of the first one … which has that pretty nifty crucifixion tree that I liked so much … even in its iffy form.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/268944/Adventure-Framework-Collection-1?1892600

By Kevin Conyers
Flooded Realms Adventure Press
OSE
Levels 1-3

Fear the waves, the tides and the sea itself! A fearsome tower of stone roams the oceans, delivering its deadly cargo of lizardmen wherever it happens to land!

This eight page adventure, written in three weeks, features nine rooms in a floating keep full of lizardmen. It’s a pretty standard affair, with little to either recommend or condemn. Meh.

Wavestone Keep keeps on giving! We have a late context entry here … from the designer of the original Wavestone Keep! And the verdict is: it’s meh. Which is good news! That’s a massive improvement! This is the kind of adventure that I find the hardest to review. Nothing really to gripe about or praise, so I narrow in on a few points. And I’m going to do that here. I wouldn’t run this, but, if it appeared in one of the Lair Compendium adventure booklets I also wouldn’t go out of my way to slam it.

So, we’re going to take a look at a couple of the room entries. Here’s the first one:

“The twin towers which flank the entry door. The are each 20’ tall and manned by two lizardmen guards. The guards stand on the roof of the tower. They are each armed with a throwing spear and a club. They have a 1in 10 chance to identify approaching ships as not belonging to their tribe, and a 4 in 6 chance to spot intruders approaching along the trail. Each tower has an alarm bell which they will ring, alerting their companions in room 4. After ringing the bell, they will attack intruders on the trail with their throwing spears before running down the stairs for melee. The entry hall is made of finely carved wavestone, and engraved with idyllic depictions of the sea, fishing vessels and sailors.”

It’s padded up. The first three sentences could be one, trimmed down. And then we’ve got a kind of reaction text that is also padded up. FInally, we have the description at the end. Normally, I want to see a description up high, first thing, but in this case the first thing the party is going to encounter is going to be the lizardmen, so they make sense to come first. Trimming up the text we could get to something like:

“Twin towers, 20’ tall, flank the door, with two lizardmen on top with a javelin and club. They spot intruders in boats 1 in 10, and on the trail 4 in 6. They ring an alarm bell, summoning room 4, then attack.” We’ve lost nothing in this, and it’s much easier to handle at play during the game. The final line, the description, is trying to be evocative but comes off a little bland. This is, I think, the hardest part of adventure writing, creating a terse but evocative description. The current one is a little abstracted and it could perhaps be improved with an actual description, using more adjectives and adverbs. (I note this is a theme here. Room two is “finely carved wavestone, and engraved with scenes of great navel battles between ships and sea monsters.” Again, abstracted.)

Room four is labeled as Barracks, with the description “Originally a barracks for the noble’s personal guard, now used by the lizardmen as a sleeping area. It is a roughly hewn room, containing a 9 sleeping mats. Kelp Tail sleeps in the section to the north, where the guard captain was supposed to sleep. At any time, there are three normal lizardmen here asleep. Kelp tail only sleeps here at night, else he is in 9. The door separating Kelp Tail’s area is made of a giant oyster shell. When sleeping, he keeps his Staff of Striking under his cot.”  Again, note the padding, through repetition of the room use, and a description of “what it used to be.” Trimming this up we could get something closer to “Roughly hewn with nine masses of rotting seaweed nests. Kelp Tail sleeps in the north section at night, with his door made of a massive opalescent oyster shell. Three lizardmen are half buried in their nests, asleep.” Shorter, more evocative. I did this in five seconds; I recommend agonizing over the descriptions and working them to death to get something really evocative that captures the feeling you are going for.

Interactivity here is pretty minimal, with most things being combat. The wandering table has a few decent entries, like a giant sleeping croc or a kobold having stolen a silver piece, intermixed with some normal “just the monster” entries. I harp, sometimes too much, on good wanderers, but a mix, like this, gets the job done. 

So, an also ran. Better room descriptions, cut the padding, and some interactivity improvements and this one could muster up No Regerts.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $1. The preview is six pages, and you get to see some rooms, so, good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/415206/Return-to-Wavestone-Keep?1892600

By James Mishler & Jodi Moran-Mishler
James Mishler Games
Labyrinth Lord
Level ?

Jordvann was once a land dedicated to Law and Good, until the rise of Eldisor, the Devil’s-Son, who together with his hordes of giants, dragons, trolls, ogres, orcs, and goblins conquered the land, reduced the people to slavery, and brought down Fimbul Winter, which caused empires to fall world-wide. Eldisor ruled for 400 years, until he was slain or brought low during a rebellion of his captains, the Old Evils. Fimbul Winter ended, and civilization rose again elsewhere, while the survivors on the Isle of Eldisor sought to stay alive between the warring Old Evils.

This 76 page hex crawl might better be described as a regional setting. And, maybe, I’m actually reviewing a regional setting instead of a hex crawl. I note, however, that the hex descriptions are lacking in situations and are more places to explore … if the DM has time to quickly make a three level dungeon map.

So, Let’s take our own world, in, say the sixteenth century, in terms of geopolitics. But, lets set it in time of the norman invasion of England, in terms of tech, etc. And let’s add in dwarves and elves and shit. And then word gets out that ATlantis has been discovered and everyone races to colonize the new world … then advance the timeline by fifty years or so and go adventuring there. That’s what you’ve got here. I’d call this a campaign setting, more than a hexcrawl. As such, I’m not really going to cover MUCH of it, since I don’t review campaign settings. I don’t know how.

So, yeah, there’s a lot of talk about The Colonies. And you start as a part of the The Colonies. The framing of this is strange. I’m all for a West Marches game, and Points of Light and so on. But when you use the word Colonies it brings subtext and meaning with it. You want that in your game? Maybe? I don’t know. I usually just want to stab shit in the throat.

This thing is listed as a hexcrawl, Cyclopedia and Gazetteer. It is a gazetteer and cyclopedia for sure. You get some backstory, a description of the major parts of the island and surrounding seas, some weather, the local population and so on. The monsters are a little reskinned, so “Hobgoblins look a lot like small to medium-sized carnivores or omnivores, such as black bears, large birds, baboons, chimpanzees, crocodiles, large dogs, goats, panthers, and so forth. Their bodies resemble those of twisted elves.” Meh, I was down for the black bear thing. I’m also down for the twisted elf thing. I dn’t really know what the two together mean, but, our humanoid pals are reskinned and very Dr Moreau … without the good doctor around. 

Eldisor is an ok place. Nothing super interesting and freaky stands out in the campaign guide. Just a solid fantasy setting that deviates a little from the Greyhawk/FR baseline. 

Hexcrawling is a different beast. The hex descriptions take up about 27 pages of this 76 page adventure. Each is a short little entry. And, this is where I take exception.

I don’t think this is a hexcrawl? If so, its a bad one? 

Hexcrawls are a different beast. You want something that has a lot of situations in it. You want the party interacting with folks and doing things and solving problems and making things worse and leveraging shit. Wilderlands is the classic example. For more, I do a comparison of Wilderlands, the Stater crawls, and Isle of the Unknown where I go in to more detail on what makes a good crawl. This, alas, is not it.

“WRECK OF THE ZEESLANG. This sunken large sailing ship houses 56 Drowned Zombies, 7 Brine Ghouls, 5 Sunken Wights, and 2 Deep Sea Wraiths.” That’s not a situation. That’s monsters at a location. And the vast, VAST majority of hex descriptions fall in to this category. There is a decent number of “village” or “stronghold” listings as well, with 450 orcs and two chifeten types things going on. But, again, they feel static. Like “here they are!” and not much else going on. This is the Isle of the Unknown style of “in this hex is a rock.” sort of descriptions.

There is a random ruins/strongholds generator for the DM to use. FOr each hex roll and see if there’s a minor village/settlement or stronghold in it, and then roll a few more times to see what race, if there’s a monster, etc. 

This is ok, but, again, I think it would be nicer if a little more thought were given to it. Asa DM you’re going to need to roll up a few of these in advance … there’s little chance you could do something on the fly in a meaningful manner. So, as a designer, roll up a page or two othem, like, two lines each, and give them a couple of words of descriptions. Keywords or something, I don’t know. Just something to get things kickstarted. 

And, our hexes proper, follow this example. We’re told, A LOT, that there’s a three level labyrinth, or some such, in this hex. Obviously the DM is going to need to do something with that. In advance.

So, is it a hexcrawl? It says it is. I’m going to say no. This is a campaign setting. And the map is a hex map. And major settlements/sites are on the map. And there’s a way to put some other stuff in hexes. But, it’s not a hexcrawl. There are not situations going on. The hexes don’t really interact. And, in fact, I might say that the hexes themselves are not the most interesting hex descriptions in the world. 

I might liken this to Blackmarsh, from Conley. And I don’t mean that in terms of quality … I think Blackmarsh is quite well done. But, rather, I don’t think of Blackmarsh as a hexcrawl either. (I think it IS one, but it doesn’t occupy that space in my head) I think of it as a regional campaign setting … with a hex crawl. The hex descriptions are there to augment my own dungeon placement and stuff. IE: Just add your own shit. 

This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages and shows you a lot of the hex descriptions. Good preview! Even though the hexcrawl is not the point of attraction, I Think, in the product. 🙂 Maybe I’m just like my mother; she’s never satisfied either …

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/384497/Isle-of-Eldisor-Hexcrawl-Campaign-Cyclopedia–Gazetteer?1892600

By Vasil Kaliman
Singing Flame
OSE
Level 1-?

DNGN #1: Weird-Fantasy Megadunegon is the first issue of a serialized zine that takes place in a megadungeon. Each issue will cover ten levels of the dungeon. It’s cover-to-cover of classic B/X monsters, magic items, encounters, secret doors, and old-school fun! It is a quick and easy resource of adventure material that a referee can use at the gaming table with no prep. DNGN is designed to work as a complete megadungeon adventure, or for levels be dropped directly into your pre-existing campaign setting.

This 44 page adventure features ten “2 page’ dungeon levels, each with about six rooms, and a “bonus adventure” at the end with a second dungeon. It’s HEAVY gonzo and, while the format is decent, the actual encounters feel almost procedural in the degree they are are on-theme and yet ultimately disconnected and unfulfilling, either seen separately or as a whole.

Yeah, how’s that bitch for a summary? 

The first of many issues, it claims, each with more levels of the DNGN. This feels like the art punk crowd found OSE and latched on to it. And I don’t mean that in the bad way. There are some fresh ideas from the art punks, and the OSE style is a decent baseline for formatting. But, ultimately, both are like buying a $800 drill and thinking it will turn you in to a carpenter; window dressing to the main event.

First, the OSE format. I like it and the rest of you dick heads who don’t can just fuck right off. We start with a room title, to orient you to the framing of what’s to come. Getting you in the mood, so to speak. Then some bolded keywords like “6 stone bowls” with some more details in parens after that, like: (12” radius). We then get some bullets to epands on the above descriptions, with their own bolded words and terse little descriptions. I think it lends itself well to scanning and fall naturally in to a “tell me more” Q/A style for play. The DM glances down, hits the bolded keywords, the players ask followup question and the DM can relate more, based o nthe paren information or the bullets. And, fucking importantly, it’s hard to fuck this shit up. Oh, it’s possible, I’ve seen it. But, also, it’s REALLY hard to turn this fucking shit in to a three paragrapgh wall of text shit fest. It kind of forces a terseness in the descriptions while leveraging the “less is more” style that I think our imaginations work best with. And, did I mention IT DOESN’T LEAD TO THREE PArAGRAPGH SHIT FEST DESCRIPTIONS? So, is it the best? Meh. It gets the job done. Do I respect the person who can craft a three sentence evocative and interactive room description in “sentence style?” Absofuckinglutly. But that number is quite rare and at least the OSE style formatting doesn’t lead to an unusable adventure. Theoretically, you could then focus on the interactivity and making the descriptions evocative.

So, on to this. I’m mildly surprised when I see, first thing in the adventure, the wandering monster table. 1d2 ACOLYTES dragging 1d3 ZOMBIES in chains. 1d4 DEEP ONES * sacrificing a human to an idol of a star god. 1d4 DUERGARS looting a charred and smoking corpse. Hey, that’s not bad! I can dig it! And then, looking depeper, only twenty entries for ten levels? And, I cherry picked some shit, there’s a lot of “they attack” on that table. Or, a merchant who has a key for sale for the nearest door? What’s that about? And, pay attention, the “what’s that about” applies to almost all of the entries, as we will soon discuss.

Ok, so, ten levels. Two pages per level. A sixish room map on one page and the facing page (digest format!) having the rooms keys. The map is clear and easy to read … but it only has six rooms also, so, meh. It does have light and  floor(?!) conditions though, for each room, on the map. Which is nice for running the dungeon, at least the light anyway. 

And the room entries? “Dead dwarf (in adventuring gear) sprawled on the floor. Bone fragments are scattered around the body.”Hmmm, I’m not sure … “Here lives a sadistic? CLERIC. He gathers his victims’ thumbs, strips the flesh away, and uses them to make bone curtains he sells to an eccentric clientele pictures/art” Oh, could it be that … “One statue in one room emits a foul odor. (entire figure is carved from human ear wax.)”  Ah, fuck me man. It is, essentially, procedurally generated. And I don’t mean a series of tables in the adventure. I mean that the entire thing is so disconnected from one another that it feels procedurally generated. There’s a theme, I guess, of some insects, and a heavy HEAVY gonzo sci-fi theme. So much so that I’m not even sure this could be classified as D&D. maybe a splugorth dungeon? Almost every room has some sci-fi in it. Anyway, the contents of a room don’t make sense. It’s like someone rolled on a sci-fi’ish version of the dungeon trappings table from the 1e DMG. Just some things in the room. And the individual rooms don’t really relate to each other. No zones or anything like that. Those acolytes? Who the fuck knows where they are going or why. That cleric? He’s got no story at all or relation to anything else in the dungeon. Just each room, individually. Almost like a funhouse dungeon. But, also, each room is not a set piece. It’s just a collection of random things. 

I’m super supportive of using tables, in a design, to help the DM spark ideas and get their imaginations going. But you can’t just write them down. You have to riff off of them, put them together. Make them work together to be larger than the sum of their parts, and, not detractfrom each other because they are all seemingly random. 

At one point, in a 30×80 room, there is a mass of vibes growing 4’ up the wall. With a purple worm hiding in them. For serious? There is no sense at all.

And the entries themselves, going back to look at them? Generic. Abstracted. The deep ones are calling for a trans-dimensional being! No. Absolutely not. They summon Cthulhu! Or one of the Great Old Ones! The Shadow People of Karth! Be fucking specific. “There is a journal in an unknown script.” Well, what the fuck does it say? I’ve got a fucking spell, that’s why!

So, the trappings are here. A “Megadungeon” with but six rooms per level. A format, but nothing to format. 

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is fifteen pages and shows you the maps and dungeon levels, so its a good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/410800/DNGN-1?1892600

By Christian Blair
Self Published
Generic/Universal
Mid-Levels

These lands are plagues with horrors, awaiting for discovery.

This 54 page adventure describes a frozen northland full of zombies and the last few settlements. Numerous small quests and a handful of tenish rooms dungeons have a spark of interesting in them, but, it has a fatal flaw. And this, seriously, breaks my heart.

This is a hard review to write. I’m going to have to pass on this because of something I’m unhappy about complaining about. I wish it weren’t so. Because, at its heart, there are some decent ideas here, combined with a tone that I think could work quite well. But not in its present form. 

What we’ve got here is some frozen tundra. Forest. Snow. hard land. Got it? A kind of bleak and snowy landscape, but with a thing pine forest almost every. Great! We’re creeping it up already! And to this we’re going to add about a bajillion zombies. There’re everywhere. It is, essentially, the zombie apocalypse, with just a few locations left that have not fallen. A Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall analogy here would not be far off. Also, we’ll throw in some specters, wights, and wraiths here and there, whenever there is a decent sized horde of twelve or so. To this we add some locations. The Last Guard Tower, on the northern trail in, with their embittered and low morale soldiers. An old farming estate complete with one holdout left, and all of his traps. The Keep, on the verge of ruin from the attacks, with a twentish people golding out inside. And the last town, with about two hundred people left. And to ALL of this a silence … for sounds attracts the zombie hordes!

And, sometimes, the writing can be quite good! Let’s take a look at the fate of the North Party, a group of people who disappeared: “Before entering, players are welcomed by a series of crucified travelers. They are tied to wooden posts. Their bodies are upside down, their hands pointing skyward. They are in an advanced state of decomposition, covered in maggots and flies, feeding. The closer they approach the post, the louder the buzzing sound becomes. Strident and eerie. Inside lies the fate of the North Party. Their bodies are piled in a mass of putrefaction in the middle of the structure. A black cloud of flies circles around. On top of all the bodies, lies a naked man. His body is full of scars in the form of occult patterns.” Not too shabby! Maybe a bit long, but good energy there!

And this is the end of my compliments.

That example of the writing is a rare one. If the adventure had A LOT more like that then I would be  ok with it, and my main gripe would be undercut. (I’m working on my click bair, how’s it going?) But, before we get there …

This is for D&D. I know it says Generic, but it’s D&D. It’s stat’d for D&D. Which is great. That’s what generic adventure should do. Everyone can convert easily enough; mechanics is just mechanics. But, also, it’s not for D&D. It’s essentially HP, AC, and XP. Dude, just stat the fucking thing out for 5e, or 1e, or whatever. It’s chill. I really don’t think there’s a palace for generic/universal adventures in the hobby … because I think nearly every adventure should be written in such a way that it’s generic/universal. 

But, also, the Table of COntents has section headings but no page number. Hmmmm …. The wandering table only has ten entries, for a LOOOOONG adventure, and yet the yeti entry says it’s “very very rare.” Hmmmm …   Oh, here’s a section, let’s see … “Blizzards are powerful snowstorms.” … Hmmmm, I think I see where this is going. How about the moose entry onthe wandering table “A white moose is spotted in front of the players. If they follow the creature, it will lead them into a hidden spot where useful treasure can be found.” *sigh*

We got two main problems here. First, it’s a simplistic adventure. By this I mean … there are quest boards in places. Almost like … a CRPG. And in fact that carries over The very first one, at the guard tower, is to go kill the remaining 2d6 zombies outside and light six torches. Whait. What. For serious? Light six torches? Did I mention the fetch quests? Collect 600kg of wood and 100kg of ore. Uh … Or, how about in the town of 200 people, “Rebuild the Sanitorium” … where you collect 40,550kg of concrete. (That’s weirdly specific …) Oh, and the townfolk can sell you 100kg a day. That’s over a year! The scale, here, in time, seems a bit off. There’s no mention of long term play, but there is certainly a lot to imply it! Hey, man, but, if you rebuild the guard tower then your reward is two martial weapons. ?!?!?!?!?!?!

It’s all very frustrating. It’s like it’s ALMOST a regional setting, but, not quite. The quests are short. Or, rather, they take about ? of a page or so to describe, from start to finish. So, you don’t a plot based quest. It’s more of a description of a situation. Which, I can rock. I love that. Except, it’s NOT that. It’s full of padding and other garbage. But, also, it’s weirdly generic, or abstracted. Zoomed out. As if the designer is afraid to get in to the specifics that help bring something alive. 

That crucifixion description proves, I think (?), that the designer can do it. But we don’t get that. We get that “involved in local politics” generalization. Or, “The soldiers advise against following the trails due to undead patrols”. No. Nope. Absolutely the fuck not. That is not what the soldier says. The soldier is haunted and says “The dude roam heavy, still your tongues and avoid the trails!”, before wheeling his horse and riding off. Jesus man, be specific. Give some detail. SHOW, don’t TELL. 

Here’s the castle intro “When the players approach the castle, they are met by a party of 4 soldiers on horseback. They introduce themselves as Royal Guards, and offer escort to the castle. They explain they spotted them from afar, and that staying outside is highly dangerous.” That’s boring as fuck! They should be unkept, expect a weirdly kept lieutenant, clearly insane. In a rush, glancing about manically, rushing the players. Calling them fools. Wanting to save them by ushering them inside. Paint the picture man. And, for the castle proper we get “There’s a total of 20 people living inside the castle. Half of them are knights, the few that remain, acting as a guards. The other 5 are workers, and the last 5 are the few leaders of the region that are still alive, among those, Eweil the Regent.” B O R I N G.But, also, on the right track, right? I mean, maybe they are getting a little handy, all 28 Days Later style. Or those cops in the hospital in The Walking Dead. Give me something to actually work with!

“An undead giant lies on the floor, chewing on the bones. The monster is accompanied by 4d4 ghouls.” It’s sooooo fucking close, right? But then, also, “This used to be another room of the catacombs, but it must have collapsed long ago.” Arrggggg! And the town? There’s a fucking serial killer on the loose.It’s so fucking close. The situations are there. 

And, now, the bad part that I am uncomfortable with. I think this is an EASL issue. And I feel like a jerk faced jerk. But, also, the descriptions are just not there. To the degree that it feels like an EASL issue. Just , word choice and phrasing and cadence and things like that. I admire the ability of someone to write this well in another language. But, you have to also be able to transfer the ideas from your head, to the paper, to a DMs head. And while you can see the glimmer of the ideas here, you don’t get the transfer because of the attractions and generalizations. 

Oh, Did i mention that, after you kill the big bad lich at the end, you get The Soul Stone. Which, once a day, can bring someone back to life. Including a zombie. !!!!

Oh, and, let’s not forget, zombies, skeletons, wights, wraiths, etc, at level 12? Don’t they all turn to ass at seeing the party cleric? I’m not sure how you handle this.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $6. The preview is 38 pages. Which is fine. Dig deep in to it, past the fist few pages, and you get a true sense of the writing.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/409358/EQ5-The-Dread-Lands?1892600

By W.D.B. Kenower
Necromancer Press
3e
Levels 4-9

Hunt for a Legendary Treasure. Deep beneath a peaceful valley lies the vault of the legendary drow adventurer, Larin Karr. Rumors claim that Larin Karr vanished long ago, but his vast treasure acquired from years of plundering hordes in the Underdark still remains. Can you find and loot the impenetrable vault?

This 114 page adventure features a small valley with numerous towns and adventuring sites, with the titular vault (25ish rooms) being the capstone. The adventure is designed well, a rarity in D&D, and the designer understands D&D. It’s the real deal D&D sandbox, with a major fucking caveat. A product of its time, and as such is not much more than a curiosity.

I own a Nissan Frontier truck, for off road camping. (#vanlife bitches!) The gold standard in this space is the Toyota Tacoma. I like to say that the Frontier is 10% more reliable than the Tacoma, costs 30% less than the Tacoma, and has 5% of the aftermarket parts of the Tacoma. Somewhere, a Nissan engineer designed the engine bay. He spent four years on it, fitting everything in it perfectly with no space to spare. This saved the company $.000001 cents per unit manufactured. And then I come along and want to add a fuse for a winch. Is the Frontier designed well? Absolutely! Is it a royal pain the fucking ass to work with? Absolutely.

And thus, Larin Karr. 

This is a real deal sandbox adventure. Things are interconnected. People are interesting. The locations are well done. There is a complexity here, in design, in interconnectedness. In morality and the situations going on. This IS a real sandbox adventure, designed well. IN THE LAND OF 3E WHERE SHADOWS LIE. For it is devoid of what is needed to make it runnable at the table. And, thus, I will never run it. Every adventure ever made in the history of mankind is now available. Why oh why should one put up with this adventure, and, I will assert in the following text, its nigh impossibility to run, when you could choose from half a dozen others that do the same thing and ARE easy to run? Why choose to suffer? Because Larin Karr is THAT much better than the other? No, it’s not. It’s good, but, once you reach those lofty heights, of being “good”, nothing s going to rock you harder than the others. This relegates Larin Karr to a curious place. A thing to be studied, to learn both how to write an adventure and how to not write an adventure. 

Larin Karr has an interconnectedness. Things in one place impact and/or have a relationship with things in another place. This is not “go collect the three gemstones scattered throughout the valley” (although this is present) but more the nature of how the real world works. The local lord, near one settlement, has a younger brother who runs one of the other three settlements. And a cousin who is mayor of the third. Family ties. Makes sense right? And the mayor is really self-appointed and hates his cousin and wants to overthrow him. Also, hes hired a gnoll in the forest to do that. Also the gnoll is now blackmailing the “mayor.” Also, both of them know some things about other things. You go places, you learn things, you talk to people, you return to places to follow up. On a decently fucking sized overland map with five mile hexes that is at least 27×40 … with about half of it directly relevant to the adventure. 

Further, note in those examples how things seem natural. They make sense. The infighting amongst relatives is common in history and fiction. The blackmail? Makes sense. The local lord is just a kid, barely 20. FABULOUSLY wealthy, and trying to appear not so because its so out of place here. The best of everything. Trying to do a good job. He comes to power and finds some records that this old abandoned ruined keep nearby actually belongs to him. So he sends out some party members to go take his keep back! That makes sense. Hes digging through shit, does not understand the full context, comes across shit, claims what is his. 

In other places we get a different kind of naturalism. An old orc burial site, underground. Floor dotted with totems, skulls on spears, necklaces of fangs draped over skeletons. Much debris scattered about, broken pieces of armour and shields, bits of leather, rusted lamps. A discarded cape in a corner. FUCK YOU! You just got eaten by the cape! A cloaker! It makes sense. It fits in well. The designer understands the scene, the orc burel ground. He understand what belongs there. It’s not some case of mechanics first, but, rather, what makes sense … ok, now lets fit it in to the rules. Which is the fuck how this shit should be. Things feel right. The interactivity is natural. 

“Two rusted portcullises stand half-raised at either end of this corridor. The dull ends of the grates descend to within 2 feet of the floor. Small or Tiny creatures may pass beneath the grate without difficulty; Medium-sized creatures must take a moveequivalent action to crawl beneath the portcullis; Large or bigger creatures require a successful Escape Artist check (OC 15) to negotiate the narrow space. Either portcullis may be raised entirely with a successful Strength check (OC 20), which breaks the raising and lowering mechanism. Once raised, a portcullis drops to the ground upon its release; future attempts to open it require no Strength check.”

So, that portcullis. Half opened. People squeezing through it. The mechanism breaking. That is exactly how a portcullis encounter should be. It’s not just a simple binary condition of open or closed, raised or lowered. 

And herein we also see that Larin Karr has a problem. A serious fucking problem. It’s a 3e adventure from the time of 3e. Usability, essentially, does not exist. 

That cloaker encounter I’m so fond of? Well, after that broken lamp sentence we get “One piece of trash, a discarded cape in the northeast cornet, is something far more sinister. The cape is, in fact, a cloaker, which lies curled in the corner of the save waiting for unsuspecting passers-by. “ This is, in no way shape or form, taking in to account that the DM has to run this room. Oh, the encounter is, but the writing for the DM is NOT. That fucking thing is padded to hell and back, a conversational style that does nothing to make it easy to scan. Quite the opposite, in fact. We see this all over the place in the this adventure. “A2: Rough Tunnel – Though poorly constructed and low (6 feet high), this tunnel nonetheless provides safe passage to and from areas A3 and A5.” Repeating what the map says. Telling us that, in fact, the kitchen is a kitchen. Poorly constructed and low is great. The rest … no. 

But, these are rather simplistic examples. The heart of Larin Karr is not, I would argue, the “dungeons.” There are a few of them, each with a handful of rooms (the titular vault having around 26, I think?) The heart of the adventure is the situations going on in the valley. The situations amongst people/places, and this, I think, is handled quite poorly. 

Oh, the DESIGN is great, but how its presented to the DM is terrible. 

Lord Kyle’s Manor is a location, in the first town area. This is where you get the description  not only of the manor, but of Lord Kyle. Which takes about a column. Which is about three DENSE paragraphs. The fucking paragraghs are great. The description is solid, in the first paragraph.; And the “Developments” in the next two, have some solid information. But, digging through a column of text, DENSE text, that is almost wall of text, to grab the information you need? Absolutely the fuck not! And yet, it’s got fucking gold in it! Nice commentary on other NPC’s and leading conversation … it lends to a natural development with him. And a great situation to resolve in the ruined keep, and how it comes to be, but, again, it’s fucking buried. 

And this is the way of this. It’s a continuation of the bad olf 2e formatting, the formatting from Dungeon. The long text paragraph, with little else to break up the words. TO call attention to things. To highlight sections. 

And this is BAD. Because of the density of material, it’s particularly bad in this adventure. It’s complex. And it’s hard to find and dig out. And I’m not GOING to dig it out. Maybe you want you run your highlighter dry, and make margin notes, and create summary sheets for yourself. I’ve got better things to do.

And, so, Larin Karr. An excellent adventure that is saddled with the Style At The Time. You can see how Necromancer built their reputation from things like this. It’s refreshing to see it, and especially so, I suspect, in the era of 2e/3e adventures, to see a real adventure pop up. The din of excitement around it makes sense. But, it’s not 2002. 

Larin Karr and Thracia fit much the same role. Very good adventures. Classics. But products of their time. And, because of that, they are little more these days but interesting curiosities. Less so Thracia, whos terseness it benefits from, from something to buy and examine. Something to learn from. Rare examples of actual well done adventures … and with fatal flaws to also learn from. 

You wanna run this? Good luck. You want to learn from it? Good choice. That’s right. Not The Best. Not Regerting this decision at all. Larin Karr deserves better. It deserves a refresh, like Thracia deserves one.

This is $11 at DriveThru. The preview is only three pages,and thus hardly a preview at all, certainly not enough to make an enformed decision about eh product from it before you buy it. But, also, the formatting, the tight text, almost reaching wall of text proportions? This is Larin Karr.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/894/The-Vault-of-Larin-Karr?1892600