Isle of the Bleeding Ghost

Posted on August 23, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Jordan Thompson
Self Published
Shadowdark
Level 1

Years ago the infamous pirate Captain Marrow led a campaign of terror across the high seas. The Pirate Queen hid her plunder on a remote island before killing her own crew to preserve the secret. Only a single map of the island survives to this day, with clues pointing to a treasure hoard within Captain Marrow’s Grotto. Within the caves, would be thieves are met with perilous traps and restless undead

This eight page adventure details a seave cave with seventeen rooms. Mermen, crabs, and skeleton pirates cavort about while the party blunders through one simplistic encounter after another. If the encounters made sense, then the good writing and formatting would be a credit. As is though, they are wasted.

Looks like a certain someone has been riding Piratesof Caribbean. Again. All that treasure on the cover photo? “Trinkets, gemstones,and doubloons totaling 350 gp.” Enjoy your slog, suckers! But, seriously, this thing is written well, its just nonsensical.

Map is fine for it’s size. Lots of varied terrain, and an underground river always adds a little flair to the game. The room descriptions are a sentence or two, up top, followed by a couple of bullets with some bolding. It’s a clean and easy to read format, maybe it uses whitespace a little too liberally, but, otherwise, it helps the DM locate information well. Which is what the fucking formatting should be doing. It’s the entire reason for formatting. 

The descriptions sprinkle adjectives and adverbs about in a way that adds colour without droning on and on. A rock stickup out of the water is “littered” with treasure. Crabs skitter. Pools teem with sea bass. There are piles of polished bones. There’s is the occasional miss here and there, and the word giant, and a few other boring descriptors, pop up a little too much, but, dude knows they SHOULD be doing. Which is more than most people can say. This extends in to the wanderers, with skeletons running cackling in to rooms, or mermen dragging the corpse of a castaway away, in to the briney deep. Perfect little descriptions, just a few extra words, and they help bring the wanderer to life. Two Teeth Tim (human, optimistic) is an NPC, a castaway, you can meet in the dungeon. As well as One Leg Charlie, the careless halfling. Great little descriptions. You know how to run these dudes. They spring to life in your mind. They are memorable. And the designer does it all in just a couple of fucking words. Why is that concept to fucking hard to grasp for other designers? 

Ok, so, decent formatting and descriptions. No real serious complaints. So how was the play?

I think not.

It’s level one. You find a treasure map to the pirate treasure. There are castaways. How did you, at level one, get to the island with the dungeon on it, that the castaways can’t get away from? Now, I understand, you think I’m nitpicking here. But, I want to to consider that this is not in isolation. This sort of design inconsistency, the lack of thinking things through and how they integrate, is present throughout the adventure. It’s almost like this adventure was never run, or the designer has not run it in any serious way. That issue would come up immediately, right? Room two is skeletons sitting at a dining room table furnished with the fetid remains of a feast. They animate if the table is disturbed. Room three is a kitchen with two HUMAN cooks. What?! They are making the food for the dining room? Why? No clue. Fetid food on the dining table? Why? If there are cooks that make it regularly? The cooks are hungry? Why? Why are they there? Theres no mention of human slaves anywhere. It’s just nonsensical. “I guess this is what is happening now.” This sort of disconnected stuff is all over the place.

How many HD is a giant octopus? They are bad as sin OSR, right? There’s on in this adventure. And one or two traps that would be quite appropriate in a Grimtooth book. WHich I’m fine with, but a little out of place these days. Hmmm, the final pirate queen boss ghost screams blood at you. Thats nice. Otherwise, enjoy stabbing shit. I guess you can talk to the various castaways you meet. To little effect. They are essentially just trivia. So … stabby stab stab to your hearts content … there is little in the way of interactivity beyond this. And, continueing a long tradition on this blog, there is no Isle. Just a dungeon with an isle implied.

If the designer can figure out how actual D&D gameplay works, the meta, then there could be a future here. 

https://jdt-dm.itch.io/isle-of-the-bleeding-ghost

Posted in Reviews | 9 Comments

The Tragic Curse of Grimhill Fort

Posted on August 21, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
Aleksandar Kostic 
Reverse Ettin Games
Shadowdark
Level 1

A terrible storm is brewing – you must find sheltef rom this accursed weather, and quickly! Veldmark, the nearest town, is over ten leagues away, so your only choice is the ruined fort on a nearby hill. As you approach, a faint cry echoes from deep within the decrepit structure. The hair on the back of your neck stands up in warning, but perhaps it was just the wind. Perhaps. Gathering up your courage, you enter the halls of the Grimhill fort.

This eight page adventure features a small fort with twelve rooms. Surprisingly decent for such a small adventure, with a touch of specificity that is rare to see. Perhaps one day the designer will do something good?

Yeah yeah, I know I know. I said no more Shadowdark. But, then, someone told me I was doing it wrong. She told me that the good stuff was on itch and DriveThru was a cesspool. The back half of that statement is certainly true, so, we’re testing out the front half. That means three SHadowdark reviews incoming, all recommended to me personally. If this is true then we’ve got problems. I don’t know where to look other than DriveThru for the cultural adventure zeitgeist. Plus, I mean, I make about $6.50 a month in referrals from DriveThru. In another six months or so I can go out drinking! (DId I mention my Patreon? I promise to spend it all on lottery tickets and drinking from brown paper bags under bridges. https://www.patreon.com/join/tenfootpole?)

This looks like a contest entry, it being limited to eight pages. Of which the designer decided that 3.5 should be useless shit like a cover, credits page, and half a page of backstory on a dead dudes body. And while I’m on a roll about density, let me cover the full page map that only manages to squeeze in twelve rooms. Yes, it’s isometric. Great. How about trying to make a real location next time, with a few rooms in it? And, the intro states you’re seeking shelter because you’re ten leagues away from the nearest place to sleep? I think not. EMpty space does not exist. I don’t know, maybe it’s the local lords hunting range or something. Otherwise, someone, or twelve, is living there.

And, that will be, very nearly, the last bad things I say about this one. It is surprisingly decent.

The first words of the adventure are: “A: Main Entrance” with three bullets that say “• Wooden signpost that says “You are not welcome here!”.• A gust of wind knocks a few branches and pebbles from the ruined walls above.• Sturdy oaken door, slightly ajar, squeaks loudly if not opened with caution, DC 9.” There’s some newlines in there so it reads easier, but, still, this is a very pleasant surprise! On two fronts! First, the fucking thing starts the adventure keys. No fucking around with all the usual padding that plagues adventures these days. “How to play the game” or “How to read a fucking stat block” or “ten pages of bullshit about a generic town.” Oh, no. Just the cover page, the blurb page, a map, and then the rooms keys. Noice! But, less meta and more pragmatically for play, check out that description! A nice wood sign. A gust of wind to add some drama. A squeaky door to reenforce it. I understand these are simple things, but, they are specific and therefore evocative. Its starting us off with a vibe. 

This continues through all of the room keys. “WIND HOWLS through cracks in the stone walls” Absolutely it does! A chandelier hangs from a beam, with pigeons having built a nest in it. Yupyup! I maybe would have made them cooing pigeons, or ruffling pigeons, but, whatever. There’s more. A bloated corpse floating in water, full of leeches and flesh-eating snails. Groovy!  And, then, when we get to a creature, some bandits in this case, we get “Two nasty-looking ruffians are yelling at each other, arguing, while the third one enjoys the show.” That a pretty short sentence, but sets up the room well. Why the fuck can’t more adventures do this? One sentence for a description and one sentence to add some action to the static description. Boom goes the dynamite! 

There are misses here. More than a few. In one room we barrels of “stolen good, worth 200gp but they are heavy” Yeah, sure, the heavy part is good. But “barrels of oats” is as short as stolen goods is and more evocative. BE SPECIFIC! And, there are some wolves that attack anyone carrying a torch. Seriously? Isn’t that the opposite of animal behavior? I guess because the bandits abuse them? And no order of battle for the bandits? Pfffft.

This is not a terrible adventure. Especially, when it comes to Shadowdark. It doesn’t feel like some ripoff thing published for a cash grab. The designer needs to stop fucking around with gimmicks though. Make a real dungeon/location. Stick in more interactivity than just stabbing shit and opening boxes. The Holy Blade: An ornate blade mounted on a jeweled iron handle” is boring. Better than Sword +1, but describe why its ornate and what/where that jewel is. Hellfire this is not. Do better. But, also, nice job not making a total shit-fest!

This is Pay What You Want at itch, with a suggest donation of $2./

https://reverse-ettin-games.itch.io/the-tragic-curse-of-grimhill-fort

Posted in Reviews | 44 Comments

Wicked Little Delves – Vol 1

Posted on August 19, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Joseph R. Lewis
Dungeon Age Adventures
OSE
Levels 1-3

These are three one-shot dungeon delves. Each delve features nine rooms or locations full of challenges and interactivity. Each delve has only one type of monster, but they are complex, and there are lots of them!

This 22page adventure features three little dungeon, each with none rooms. A cellar with spiders, a little prison with Boom Hounds, and a little sea cave with crabs. Lewis is a master of the craft, with great descriptions, interactivity, and organization. These are a little small for me to get completely behind, but, for an evenings entertainment as a stand-alone, I thin they set the standard.

A feel like I’m coming off of writing a thousand shitty little reviews that don’t go in to much detail about what is bad and why. I just say “they’re garbage” and move on. Now, I think, I have the opposite problem. I’m faced with something decent and all I can say is “Hey, it’s pretty good.” But, let us endeavor to persevere! (Also, it’s the Friday morning of GenCon and I’m finishing this up before heading downtown to the con, so, you know …)

Lewis knows what’s he’s doing. In every way. He consistently pops out decent product. He understands D&D, he understands writing, and he understands what is needed in formatting to tie things together. This particular product, a compilation of three short adventures, exemplifies his ability. I’m only regerting it because they ARE a little short for me I know its unfair, but, also, I think these set the standard baseline for what to expect from an adventure. If you’re not at least this tall then perhaps hone things up by writing for 5e or something. If I wanted to grab an adventure to run tonight I wouldn’t hesitate to use one of these as a filler. 

I guess I should start with the formatting. H’es using a three-column style, with one room per column. We get a little room name and the dimensions, a little door and light summary, then a little section hat could be read-aloud or a summary for the DM. A few words are underlined. Those are expanded upon below in bullets with their own descriptions in more detail, notes about interactivity and so on. There are cross-references to other pages where needed, and monsters noted in red to stand out. Bolding and underlining some in to play. In other adventures I could bitch about almost all of this. Room dimensions? It’s on the map! Light and doors? Pfft. But, he integrates them in to the text easily, not wasting space but instead using ALL of his whitespace to effect. The room name is short, so he puts the dimensions right after that. No wasted whitespace after the room name and the ability to insert the dimension without impact to the text. A billion different types of formatting? That can be confusing. But not here. He knows why and how to format to get his point across without it feeling like it so over the top tha the text is now confusing to read, distracting. Three rooms per page?! Heresy! But, his rooms are stuffed with interactivity. The column and bullet format makes it easy to run the room and find what you need. It doesn’t FEEL like a wall of text or useless trivia but rather that the room is stuffed with shit to interact with … and also without it seeming like it is useless interaction. It’s his format, he owns it, figuratively, and shows he’s the master of it.

He understands the dungeon interactivity. His anderers do something interesting, allowing the DM to brng some life to an otherwise what could be boring wanderer. It’s not overblow. It’s just a few words, but they are FOCUSED words. Spiders “sleeping in a flooded sinkhole in the floor, releasing bubbles.” You can run that as an interesting encounter, even though its just a wanderer. And he does this in entry after entry. Just a little, and enough to riff on and findf fun with the players. 

His treasure is great. A compass, a black leather tricorn hat, a silver cutlass. Gold-red coins … whose scent attracts predators! ANd likewise the magic items. A crystal goblet that purifies an liquid placed in it. Powerful. Not presented mechanically. It has wonder. And yet, it’s crystal, so, you really carrying it around the dungeon with you? People trip and fall all the time in the dungeon. A magic rabbits foot. You can reroll a save. But one of your items vanishes in a puff of rabbit fur and muted screams. Groovy! It’s short and oh so wonderful for adding colour to your games!

In one adventure, a sea cave full of crabs, you have the opportunity to get the blessing of the shark goddess. At least, the person who has killed themost crabs gets the opportunity. And if so then you might become a were-shark. And, in one room: “When a were-shark touches the skeleton, it whispers, “Who dares disturb my slumber?” If the were-shark speaks nobly and mentions the crabs, then the ghost of the giant shark appears and slaughters all crabs nearby.” Fucking groovy, right?! Not really hidden depth, but just below the surface and ready to go. These don’t exist all over the place, it’s not set piece after set piece or gonzo after gonzo.; There’s just shit to explore in the rooms and fuck with and it FEELs like you’re exploring. 

Lewis knows what he’s doing. Like I said, I’m being a little unfair here, because of the length of them. But, also, like I said, these are perfect little things for dropping in on a random night where you want a one and done and don’t need something overly involved. I wish all of those shitty little adventures I review were as good as these.

This is $4 at DriveThru. Preview is none pages, which gets you a look at the first adventure, the spiders in the basement. That’s more than enough to get a good idea of what you are buying and see what he does well.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/444216/Wicked-Little-Delves-vol-1?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | 12 Comments

The Tomb of the Baboon King

Posted on August 16, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Sage Paoilli, Dean leonard, John R. Brennan
Armored Storyteller Publishing
OSE
Levels 8+

The civilization that once worshipped the Baboon King no longer exists, and only a few scattered ruins remain. None remember its name. A few rare scholars and priests deciphered fragments of the ancient city- state’s history. The humidity of the region devoured most scrolls and painted images left behind. Only the stories recorded in worn stone provided a clue into the past.

This 33 page adventure details a dungeon with 24 rooms. I kept thinking I was in a 5e adventure instead of an OSR one. It’s fine, I guess, as linear dungeons go. Whatever. It’s so bland and yet polished that my eyes have glazed over in looking at it.

I don’t know why your level eights are afraid of a baboon, king or otherwise. AC0 with 101hp, I guess. Along with a 4d6 bite and two 6d6 claws. Meh. What is that, more than a huge red dragon? Or a Trex? Sure thing man. I guess  this is one of those “Bryce doesn’t know classic fantasy fiction” things again, where Conan or Elric or someone masturbated a bunch of baboons and now we have to think they are cool or something.

The map is terrible. It’s too small to read. It’s one of those full color things, with detailed floor tiles. A garish monstrosity that you can’t make out any detail in, or even the room numbers. And it’s linear. Yea, linear. So you are almost doing, like, 24 rooms all in a row, in a straight line, to make it to the end of the adventure. That is SOOOOOOO anti D&D that I don’t even know how to describe WHY it is. There’s no exploration. No choice. No unknown. No mystery.Just a boring nonstop of first this and then this happens to you. Who the fuck would want to play something like that? Room after  room in a straight line. I’m not sure I even made dungeons like that when I was eight. 

Let’s see … book magic items. A wilderness and dungeon wandering table in which 95% of the entries have a sentence or two of text that amounts to “They Attack!” Yup, we’re doing everything right it seems.

The encounters, the rooms proper, are … something. Basically it amounts to a surprise in each room. In this room your surprise is: water pours in to flood the room. In this room your surprise is: walk the CORRECT path of wisdom on the floor tiles. In this room your surprise is: poison gas drives you crazy. In this room your surprise is: wait, it’s just some monsters attacking if you open some caskets. That’s the first four rooms. Then there’s eight mummies. Then a spear trap. Then the ever-present falling portcullis and bronze golem. And then vines in the room. It’s all the same. It’s shit you have seen a thousand times before implemented in exactly the same way it’s been implemented a thousand times before. 

For each room you get a paragraph or two under the heading of What Is Noticeable and a whole lot more text, many paragraphs, under the heading of What Is Not Immediately Noticeable. Nice idea. Terrible implementation. Rooms take a page. The first room takes a page and a half for a flooded room trap. There’s a one page stat block in another room. This is just TERRIBLE. What were they thinking?! There’s three of them. Did NO ONE stop and say “Hey maybe this is a bad idea.”  

I’m just incredulous. AT level eight. In B/X. OSE is basically B/X, right? Level eight. How the fuck do you make a level eight D&D adventure boring? How do you put a challenge in every room and STILL make the adventure boring?1

GenCon is in two days. Dear baby jesus, please let me find some joy there …

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages. You get to see that first room. It could be a longer preview, but, I guess it does show you a room.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/443056/The-Tomb-of-the-Baboon-King-Campaign-Drop-A2?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 21 Comments

The Whispering Demon

Posted on August 14, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Davide Tramma
ANGRY GOLEM GAMES
OSE
Levels 3-4

Centuries ago a group of adventurers belonging to a holy order of clerics and paladins chased a demonic entity, known as the Whispering Demon, to the complex of subterranean caves located at the center of the Frozen Marshes. The clash between the adventurers was brutal and deadly, and the combatants fell one after another against the demon. Only one of them was still standing to face the demon in a last deadly clash. The holy warrior was about to deal the fatal blow to the demon, who in return, realizing that his demise was inevitable, cursed himself and the body and soul of all his chasers. The whispering demon’s body burst and was consumed by his own unholy fire until only his heart, made of a pulsating black rock and violet amethyst, remained in place. The body and the soul of the adventurers were consumed in the explosion and returned as undead under the service of the Demon’s will, with the demonic heart becoming a bridge connecting his layer of the Abyss with the Prime Material Plane. Now an Abyssal Mist surrounds the caves, with the frozen marshes around it making the landscape even more impassable.

This 73 page adventure has a dungeon with two levels and … thirty rooms? It makes drudgery of the game, with billions and billions of skill checks and little to no interactivity beyond that. I mourn for the futures that will never exist.

We’re doing some weird shit in this adventure. What the designer chooses to focus on is interesting. And essentially useless. In town we get an entry for the Inn. It has NO information except a list of hirelings and a rumour table. Ok … I could almost get behind that. I might slap in a fucking name or something(the inn is just listed as Inn … literally nothing else but those two tables), but sure. The General store gets no information either, except a price list and how much they charge.Which is all pretty useless information.

It’s this weird focus. The overland adventure portionis through a cold swamp. We get a random encounter table, and rules for how far you travel each day and hypothermia … but not for how/when to roll on the encounter table. I assume there’s a normal interval from OSE … but that “how far you travel in one day” thing is almost at odds with this. Why not mention the encounters?

And the … padding? The first forever pages are all summaries of the adventure. Like page after page after page of summaries. I do like a summary to kind of get me oriented, but not several pages worth. One of them is something like “the frozen marshes hide the remains of ancient ruins.” Well no fucking shit. And it’s all “a local power wants you to …” or “a local church wants you to …” This is an aggressive abstraction that removes the specificity that actually brings life to an adventure. Its a total focus on the wrong things in the adventure. “This is an ancient language that belongs to an local ancient civilization.” I am inspired to greatness!

No level range on the cover or in the description. The marsh encounters, the text for each, is in some random order, making them hard to find in the booklet when you need them. The PDF is in “spreads” for no reason. The hireling/rumor table, one of the few actual useful things, is in WAY too small font. 

Once your in the dungeon you can counts on lots of skill/stat saves for no real reason of interesting gameplay, Hiding interesting information, that expands the game world, behind a skill check is pretty pointless. You WANT the players to know interesting things about the world. Sure, if its going to benefit them then maybe hide it behind one, but, otherwise give it to them for immersion reasons. And … I’m not even so sure I’m that much behind putting useful information behind skill checks. 

Most of the dungeon, ast room one, is behind a tunnel that leads away from room one. A tunne ltoo small to get through. It takes a day to dig it out. In theory thats cool. It’s, like, expedition behaviour. But, this isn’t an expedition. It’s supposed to be a crawl. Its all just bizarre. And, did I mention the 27 dretches in a room that spill out on to you? Again, interesting concept, but I’m not sure about teh implementation at this level?

There’s just SO much going on in this dungeon for absolutely no reason. You encounter things that are trivia. And it’s all so aggressively abstracted and generic. I’d give you a specific example but the asshat designer has disabled copy/paste in the PDF, guaranteeing it would be hard to use in actual play. 

There’s just NOTHING HERE. No interesting interactivity. No evocative descriptions. Just aggressive abstraction of trivia. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is twenty pages, so, enough to see what is going on. And find out the fucking level range.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/448099/The-Whispering-Demon–Old-School-Essentials-Compatible?1892600

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

The Curse of Vecna

Posted on August 12, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Dave Hartlage
Self Published
5e
Levels 8-10

An 8-year-old child hands the party a note, which reads, “I poisoned my parents. I am a very wicked boy and I should hang.” He offers a reward for help waking his sleeping parents. This quest takes characters to a dungeon under a ruined estate to break a curse Vecna put on the feuding family that served him. This adventure combines unforgettable roleplaying scenes, a dungeon to explore, and secrets to unravel.

This seventeen page adventure features a dungeon with 23 rooms. It’s got some decent ideas, here and there. It’s also trying WAYYYYY too hard on the formatting front, which ends up making it confusing. And the descriptions are less than stellar. It’s promise ends up being mostly a one trick pony.

That intro is pretty good, eh? “I poisoned my parents, I am a very wicked boy and I should hang.” That’s pretty fucking sweet, man, as a fucking hook or inciting event or whatever. That shit is irresistible! Warms my  jaded heart. I’m fucking in, man! And we’ve got deputy dickhead batting the kid away, while asshole sherif is hiring you to find a stolen book. Both asshats, acting like asshats, and this fucking kid is there. It’s quite good. 

Fucking eight year old in D&D-landian writing a note? No way. His friend gave it to him. Turns out it’s a boggle who has set the illiterate kid up.  Funny looking boy who lives in the ruined chapel. Turns out it’s a boggle who has set the illiterate kid up. His idea of a joke. Fucking awesome man! The first kid has a little sister. She’s hungry. If you give her food then she doesn’t eat it all. “We should save some for the hungry people int the basement” or some words to that effect … oh man! Can you imagine?! The players should be LOSING. THEIR. SHIT. about now. 

Oh, oh, that sheriff? That hires you to find the book? Here’s his opinion on the local ruler, the one who killed her entire family to take power, the legend says: “Salis smiles in admiration and says, “That’s how a strong ruler shows strength and keeps stability. Show me a king called ‘the good’ or ‘the pious,’ and I’ll show you people beset by invasion and civil war. Lady Vis- cec showed the price of unrest, and so she ruled over peace and prosperity.” Fucking wonderful man! Fucking wonderful!

The boggle, and book for that matter, are in room one of the dungeon. Everything before room two is great. I fucking love  it. The inciting event. The sheriff. The deputy. The kids. The bogle. Fucking great. Then the dungeon starts and shit goes downhill fast. Basically, you go to the nearly-the-last room and fight The Skull Lord and and a couple of undead. Along the way you can pierce together a puzzle, of how Lady Despot killed her siblings, and do things like put the right head on the right body to have that body tell you a secret. Which  is something like “watch out for the floor in the last room when you are fighting the big bad.” IE: some hint to that boss fight. There’s really not much more going on than that. 

Along the way we get fine rooms like room eleven. “Salon” “This room is empty” That’s if you’re on the material plane. If you’re on the Shadowfell then its “This room contains comfortable chairs and empty bookshelves.” Great. I am inspired. I love my life. IE: the room descriptions are some combination of non -existent and joyless. And the entire thing is a fucking mess with formatting. Traditional black font. And red font. And blue font. And line section separator. And italics read-aloud. In ref. I get it. Your heart is in the right place man, but execution is lacking. The material plane/shadowfell thing, requiring a couple of descriptions for each room, doesn’t help AT ALL. 

And, you know, there’s this over explanation of things. Like every little thing has to be justified, or explained to the DM in detail. “The deputy is acting like this because …” Nah, find some other way to get the point across. “Ingratiating/blllied” does it in two words. 

Fixing the formatting crap would make this an ok short adventure. Nothing special. Just, like, one of those side-trek things from the Old Dungeon mags. It’s really too bad. It started so strong before falling in to its “solve the riddle!” shit.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see that intro/inciting event, and you can start to get an idea of the formatting issues. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/441084/Curse-of-Vecna?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 8 Comments

Hounds of Hendenburgh

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Liam Padraig o Cuilleanain
Self Published
Cairn
Low Levels

Terror roams the dark and brambled paths of the Kryptwood. A pack of giant spectral hounds rule the night, savaging those foolish enough to brave the forest. The villagers of Hendenburgh cower in the shadows of the ancient boughs as each morning heralds a newly savaged corpse.

This 22 page adventure presents a delightful little romp through a colourful town, a dreadful forest, and a small haunted dungeon/crypt. Would that everything I reviewed were at least this good. A credit to county Donegal!

Ok Liam, I’ll strike you a deal. I’ll give this one a pretty good review and in return you don’t roast me for not including the fifteen different accent marks in your name. 

We got a small village. Folk inside it are being attacked by ghostly hounds. Oliver the poacher took out a mob to the forest to hunt them down, and  they killed a few, but the mob got seriously fucked up. Hola bitches; it’s time for you, the party, to show up and fix things. Or, so it seems. What we have here is something quite interesting: the adventure is not the adventure. The ghost hound thing, while a real situation, are but one of things going on. They are, essentially, a pretext, with the rest of the excitement of the adventure coming from the townfolk and others hanging around. And it is magnificent. Simple, but engaging enough situations to add complications and shit to any  adventure that party might want to head in to.

Let’s see, the local lord is ancient and senile. But, he got an “inappropriately young wife.”  That’s fun! Both singularly and in combination with each other! And, also, she’s  “a student of the new learning who regards reports of the ghostly hounds as mere peasant superstition. She attributes the savaged bodies found in the woods to the work of a particularly vindictive badger.” Great! And, Oliver the Poacher, who’s ready with a posse of the three Winstaple sons, Gregory the Blacksmith, and five village toughs in case the party throws around too much weight. A fuckingpoacher man! And “the Winstample boys.” Fyuck yeah. That’s how you add specificity. That’s how you make a situation. The pastor, who could banish the ghosts, is a hoot. He’s a heretic. The villagers informed on him and he was punished by the bishop. He’s fucking bitter as all fuck. And a drunk, making his own wiskey. Convince him to help them and load him up with grain alcohol! (And, at the end, the villagers love him, turn to his heresy … only to have the bishop send in the inquisition, eventually. Sweet!”) The miller is sad, his wife is gone. I guess the hounds killed her. Turns out shes left him and moved in with the local bandit leader. He’s Sly Willy, with his men. More bluster than ability, but he DOES have a lot of men. Also, he reneged on a deal to marry one of the three crones that live in the woods. I didn’t mention them? How about “Naked apart from the cloud of flies that cling to her old leathery flesh” or “Eyeless crone who wears a tattered black leather cap and robes sewn from seaweed and taut human flesh.” Great! Perfect! Three’s about six or so more townspeople/things in the woods that you can deal with, including the ghost dude in charge of the hounds. Just break the circle around his tombs dn he’ll fuck off along with his dogs. And he’s a man of his word! There’s SO. MUCH. going on here. And it’s never overpowering. It’s never so much you can’t handle it. It’s all delightful, terse, and sets up a great situation for the party to handle. You’ve got lots of paths to weave your way through this little area and whats going on. There’s no assumed solution, although there are notes to help with the most common ones. 

This is all fucking great. The designer has a knack for these situations, human nature, and a terse but evocative description. Treasure is well-enough described, just a couple of extra words. Like a gold wedding band or a gem-encrusted jewelry box. All told, you get nine hexes described (and about nine more empty), with one of them being the town and another the main dungeon/crypt of nine rooms. 

I’m a pretty ig fan of this. But it could be better. Maybe a one pager with the major NPC’s on it. And, at heart, beyond the townfolk shit, this is a horror adventure. It’s fucking ghost hounds in the woods attacking folk and a crypt at the end. It should feel scary. And while the descriptions and the ilk tend to lean a little in that direction, it doesn’t really push that theming very far. A few extra notes … a little bit of a lingering phrase to help bring home the dread and anxiety would have helped quite a bit. You want to keep that theme going int he adventure, after introducing it, instead of it just coming out as a hack. And the designer could have done more to help bring this forward, especially for the DM. There’s nothing to stop the DM, and even some theming to help, but it really just needs more in this area. 

Big fan though. Looks like this is his only adventure?

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. And with a sixteen page preview, you can see more than enough of the adventure. Nice job.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/444913/Hounds-of-Hendenburgh?1892600

Posted in Reviews, The Best | 155 Comments

The Elixir

Posted on August 7, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Jean-Claude Tremblay
Le Paysagiste de l’Imaginaire
Cairn 
Low Levels

The village of Termiluth is the largest producer of giant blueberries, also called ”Varanox berries” from the name of the famous wizard-botanist who created this variety of small fruits. Unfortunately this season, no flowers appeared in the fruit bushes. Strangely, the water in the pond used to water the plants turned yellow just before flowering, which may have prevented the flowers from appearing? One of the villagers was sent to bring offerings to the water fairy at the shrine in the forest, but the water fairy had disappeared. Panic begins to invade the population. Will the adventurers be able to help the village? Only them can tell…

This 28 page digest adventure has a cave with eight rooms and two wilderness encounters. It contains the phrase “they attack!” over 183 times, with no interactivity beyond that. Also, it’s written at a first grade level. Also, I fucking hate this fucking shit. 

I do love an adventure by our foreign friends. [Where foreign is defined as not the cultural center of the universe. ‘Merica! Fuck Yeah!] I tend to enjoy the freshness they bring to their adventures and the reliance on a different cultural heritage to bring something new to the table. This is, of course, a romanticized view of the situation. In reality our foreign friends produce crap, just like everyone else does. On to todays review of an adventure which is published in both English and French!

You roll up in town, find out the blueberries are not flowering, and get hired on to go find out why and get the local water nymph to bless the suddenly yellow water in town. Ohs nos! Mushroom people at the fairy pond! They attack! Let’s follow their trail. Look, it cross a bridge with a troll. It attacks! We then continue to a cave, full of mushroom people. They attack! Yeah, we saved the princess from Bowser and can go home. I assure you, this is the entirety of the adventure. 

How does it take 28 pages to do this Well, pages eight through eleven describe the town of eleven locations. We get boring mundane descriptions written for a first grade reading level. “What would become of all the farmers in the village if Aldir the blacksmith wasn’t there to make and repair the tools needed to grow giant blueberries? He’s also good at repairing weapons and armor!” Seriously. That’s the entry for the blacksmith. The entire entry. No embellishment or cherry picking of phrasings from me. That’s it. I don’t even know what style that is … Joycian? Entry after entry of shit like that. Nothing to add to the adventure. 

There is one good entry. “Upon arriving at the shrine, strange fungal creatures (6) jump and dance around the central pond that served as the water fairy’s refuge.” Not enough jumping and dancing of mushroom people in adventures, so that’s good to see. But EVERYTHING else is just simplistic wording that ends with a “They attack!” Nothing else. No exploration. No decisions. Just fighting mushroom people … and one troll. “The bridge troll is colluding with the mushroom people. His goal is to not let anyone cross the bridge.”

Your reward for defeating a troll? A sword, a helmet, a shield, two days of rations and 67gp. Rejoice D&D players, everywhere, you have hit the mother load!

Why people write this sort of thing I will never know, I guess. Watching the paint dry or playing a story game seems more enjoyable. Also, there is no elixir. 🙁

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1. There’s no preview, but hey, download it and see. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/442732/The-Elixir—LElixir?1892600

Posted in My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Reviews | 16 Comments

Legacy of Blackscale Lagoon

Posted on August 5, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Peter Spahn
Mythmere Games
S&W
Levels 1-3

What starts out as an ordinary venture into the backwater (and very watery) swamps of Blackscale Valley turns into a complex mystery about the events that took place in the Valley about a hundred years ago. Not everything is what it appears to be, and peril awaits the characters at every turn!

This 24 page adventure details a small wilderness region with six locations, two of which have around a nine-room dungeon each. It’s not a disaster, by normal standards of the industry. But by OSR standards … I have a hard time imagining how it got to the way it is. Long and … meh?

This feels so much like a converted adventure, in terms of the plot. Lizardmen worship a dead dragon and they subjugate some goblins to act act their hench, raiding a village to try and find the dragons egg. That’s right out of a dozen or more modern era adventures. So much of this feels like a modern era adventure … and I don’t mean a conversion. It’s weird to see Spahn and Finch on this as the primary designer and editor. It looks like it’s being advertised as “the new B2!” and is some kind of add on, I guess, to a S&W kickstarter? That makes sense. I was surprised to see something from Mythmere and it makes sense that this is just a throw-away thing tacked on to a kickstarter, given the quality.

You start with a quarter page read-aloud and then get attacked by goblins and a lizardman. If someone in your group dies then the town guard shows up to drive the attackers off. These are not good portents for the future of the adventure.

The town has a couple of good hirelings to grab; short entries with just a sentence to describe a really good hook for them. “Tends to invade personal space and look people in the eye too long” or Slick Jimmy the halfling “. Slick Jimmy is arrogant, glib, but surprisingly cautious. Loves to play dice.” This is exactly what you want in a an NPC description. It’s terse and leaves out all of the eye colour bullshit that tends to plague descriptions. You get a description instead that allows the DM to riff on it and being the person to life. You immediately know what to do with them to run them. This is perfect for an NPC and, in spirit, is exactly also what you want in a room descriptions. You want something easy to scan that implants itself in your head immediately and allows you to riff away on it easily. Otherwise, the town, is a problem. And serves as an example for the rest of the adventure.

If we look at the general store in town we can get a good idea of what is going on.  It is just about a column of text. And that text tells you that it is the usual general store. There is nothing special about this place. The chick in charge doesn’t have anything special about her. There’s no hook to pick up. There’s nothing interesting at all about it. But it takes nearly a column to describe that. What is the purpose of this? It feels like something I haven’t mentioned in quite some time: pay per word. The padding out of an entry just to fill space. The other entries are similar. I should note that the parties reward to investigating the goblin/lizardmen attacks are 100 gp each … even though the dude offering doesn’t have but 164gp in his loot box. That’s not very “loot the B2 Keep”, but, then again … the main cleric dude sends you off on this quest … only to attack you when you return. You see he’s got a dragon egg hes hiding. Which means you face a newborn dragon, a L3 cleric, and 2d4 militia when you return to town, in a chaotic battle scene. I like the concept here, if not the execution.

The encounters, some of them, have a littl bit of something different to them, here and there. There’s a ruined tower, partially collapsed, the lower floor with some standing water … and a giant leech. That’s not something you see every day. The entry if far, far too long for its providing, as it is with all of the encounters in this. But, also, it’s nice to see something other than the usual giant spider attack … even if there ARE stirge later on. Otherwise we’re not looking at anything very interesting. Fight some goblins and fight some lizardmen and avoid the collapsing rubble. 

The formatting is not the strong point here. It’s almost time for GenCOn, and I bought a couple of adventures at genCon last year that I still haven’t reviewed. These are for systems other than D&D. There’s this thing that happens where someone gets some money and publishes a new system. You know, all hardback with a lot of art and glossy pages with full background images. And then they publish an adventure or two for it. And they all look the same. Some section headings and not much formatting beyond that. Long stretches of paragraph blocks with almost nothing breaking it up. This is disastrous for running an adventure. You can’t find anything and you have the pause the game for long sections of time while you absorb the information … only to learn that there is nothing really interesting or interactive going on in the room.

We do, however, get a short boxed section on the morality of killing lizard men babies, a reference to the killing of children from Henry V. Absolved, I find three, orc baby killer! 

I shall finish by noting that this has two four star reviews on DriveThru … a more serious critique could not be given. The adventure is quite disappointing. I was excited to see something from Mythmetre and Spahn. But, for whatever reason, they seem to have forgotten everything about OSR adventures. Or, they are taking things to the next level by emulating the glossy big product drops of those third-party systems/games I referenced earlier. 

This is $8 at DriveThru. There is no preview. For shame!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/446307/Legacy-of-Blackscale-Lagoon?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 27 Comments

The Tomb of the Sand Sorcerer

Posted on August 2, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Lewis McMeekin
Mucker71
OSR
Levels 1-3

In ancient ages past, the high sorcerers of the endless deserts ruled with mighty magics and fiendish spells. As time went on and their empire fell to infighting, demonic influences and wayward spells, each subsequent sorcerer king and his fellows grew weaker and weaker, until finally a rebellion crush

This eight page adventure have a tomb with eight rooms. It’s garbage. 

Okok, yeah yeah, it’s garbage. But, get this, it’s Levels one through three, right? Yeah yeah, but, get this: it’s got EIGHT mummies and a lich in those eight rooms! I know, right? But, you see, that’s click bait, from me. The mummies are AC7 HP4. With an init of -3! They are zombies! So, you know, pretty interesting to put some zombies in mummy wrappings. (And give them a penalty to attack while wrapped up) Anyway, I thought it was cool. My “this is my tomb and I’m the sand sorcerer and I’m a lich now” is a different story.

There’s a central chamber to the dungeon with the other eight rooms hanging off of it. I’m not actually sure where you enter the dungeon. There’s some puzzle thing outside that you have to solve and then stairs appear in the earth, a kind of ramp. There’s this black semicircle on the central room in the dungeon, so, maybethat’s the ramp? I don’t know. Anyway, you go in to all of the eight rooms. Ones got the mummies in it. Otherwise, you just loot the rooms of a couple of boring treasures. Then, once you do all eight, and come back to the central chamber, the sarcophagus lid (magically sealed, of course) pops off the sarcophagus in it and Mr Lich appears. Or, rather, mr lich, lower case. AC14 and HP30. If he defeats the party then leaves his tomb and seeks to restart his empire. With his one spell “sand blast” and the ability to hover. Oh, and he drains 1 HP from each person in a small radius. Anyway, he’s restarting his empire. With AC14 and 30 HP. And one spell. I mean, sure, restart your empire my man. Until you run across a group of kids that throw rotten apples at you and you then die. But, also, who am I to shit on someones dreams? 

As for the rest of this … the map is uninteresting. These sorts of things are just “Have an encounter have an encounter have an encounter” Lame. Why have a map if there’s nothing to do on it? No exploration? [Ed: Because Byrce will slam you if you don’t.] No real interactivity here. The Get In puzzle and then the mummy and lich fight. No other real puzzles or things to do besides loot a bit. 

But there is TONS of text. Looooong sections of boxed text… yeah! It’s been awhile since that particular vice has shown up. And long DM’s text. That says nothing. Well, besides historical backstory that is meaningless. And the text there is contains overwrought text. “The

fabric, once vibrant and regal, is now weathered and worn, covered in layers of fine desert sand that cling to its every thread.”

*barf*

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $2.62. The preview is four pages and show you only the outside puzzle. Garbage preview. Garbage adventure.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/444478/TOROHA–The-Tomb-of-the-Sand-Sorcerer?1892600

Also, congrats to Kelsey! I revisited DriveThru after an absence and saw a TON of new adventures in the OSR section … 95% of which were Shadowdark! I mean, I LOATHE the fact that they are there, but, also Shadowdark is the new hotness for sure. Congrats!

Posted in 2 out of 10, Reviews | 10 Comments