tenfootpole.org

By Jonathan Becker
No Artpunk #2
1e
Levels 10-14

Vast beyond reason, the DUNKLE ZEE stretches beneath skies of perpetual twilight, its inky depths reflecting not a single star but only the occasional lantern of a passing ship. Yet few ships sail the black waters of this ocean between worlds, a measureless sea that connects every coastline from every time period and alternate dimension that ever was.

This 24 page adventure details a 36 room set of caverns housing a couple of wizzos and crew  bent on destroying the multiverse. Good encounters, decent imagery in places and a straightforward formatting style that doesn’t have encounters overstaying with extra text. It’s a straight up dungeoncrawl for high levels with no gimmicks.

High level adventures can be rough. By the time your’s fourteens you should have domains and be involved in your own worlds goings on. Fitting a published adventure in to your own world is going to be a problem. A good one anyway; once with nuance and depth to it. Something more than the simple smash and grabs of your level fours. The nuance is depth is generally required to keep the party from just smashing and burning everything in their path to their goal. IE: you force them to gimp themselves because of the consequences instead of Ye Olde 863 wishes to keep the party from passwalling the whole adventure. 

None of that here though. This is just a smash and grab. The only gimps are no spell recovery, which is fine. It’s a time pressure mechanic, replacing the standard wandering monster rolls. Two wizards want to destroy the multiverse and you’re off to the multiplaner nexus to do a little stabbin. You got a decent caverns map, and some high level characters and their henchmen. Don’t waste your spells and get in to fuck some dudes up! 

And fucking em up you will to! One room has 24 ochre jellies. Another has 36 giant constrictor naked. Another has 96 stirge. All in the relatively confined space of a cavern complex. The scale is a little larger than normal, but, still, load up on those mass kill spells kids, loaded for bear! The smaller scale stuff is rough also. The usual mirror of opposition so you’re all fighting yourselves. Both types of Gith. Tentacle beasts, a good rot grub encounter (perfect for this level!) , a mind flay, and the wizzos with some great use of black puddings as a stand in for spheres of annihilation. This is all pretty much straight up fights. They generally have something a little extra to them to help bring them alive. Needlemen that are trees, the black pudding thing, as floating blobs, the ochres suck the walls and detach like some bad horror movie. Just enough there to help give the DM something to make shit a little more interesting than an “you enter the room and are attacked.” 

I really can’t enough good things about the encounters here. They really hit that sweet spot I am looking for. Maybe just a little more would have been nice, for them, but they are what I think makes a good encounter for the DM. The black puddings. There’s a wizzo, mediating in a room, in front of two giant black blob in the air. Wammao! Two black puddings to add to the fray. The red ochres, throbbing, attached to the walls, kind of flying off or dropping on the players. One of the gith wears a ring of delusion, thinking, and acting, like he’s a lawful good paladin. Until he sees the flayer. It doesn’t require a lot to add just that little extra to your encounters, and the designer does this well. 

Descriptions are hit and miss. A magic shield covered in ape filth and a magic axe with a gnawed wooden handle. Or “A dull red light illuminates this cavern, emanating from a huge serpentine mound of mottled crimson heaped against the far wall. The glow is visible as characters approach the cavern from any direction. The mound pulses gently, perhaps in slumber.” Again, nothing too much to these, but hitting at just about the right level of detail to turn something standard in to something that comes to life a little, just waiting for the DM to bring more to it, inspired. But, for every bit of interesting description there’s also an empty room with a simple bed in it. Or a “refuse pit for the trogs”, with nothing more added to it. And, glowing runes is a description fit for a large room. Both overdone and needing to be echoeing and pulsating. The bottom of The Bone Pit is “Many humanoid bones litter the floor. Few are human.” Not exactly the highlight of my year, month, or even week.

So,it’s pretty straight up thing. No real gimping, just a dungeon full of shit to stab, letting the party run wild with their magic. Divination, location, mass kills, and bypass spells, all put in to play. And, light on the tricks and traps, but, also, I’m not sure how you do that in something like this. Anyway, decent hack for those looking for a simple high level affair.

https://princeofnothing.itch.io/no-artpunk-ii

By DM Ritzlin

No Artpunk #2

1e

Levels 1-3

The secret caves beneath the necropoli of Desazu are riddled with danger and nefarious evil. A bizarre cult led by a perverse necromancer has been desecrating graves and plundering corpses for their own foul uses. Who will put an end to their heinous deeds? Only those brave enough to venture into… THE LAIR OF THE BRAIN EATERS

This 13 page bonze-agy dungeon is set in tunnels under a cemetery. Sub-humans, undead, and rats combine with some leftover temple elements to give a straightforward crawl with utilitarian descriptions. It’s heart is in the right place, but comes off staid.

This has some good things going for it. You’ve got some great in-voice rumors and non-standard potions (eat some brains!) and descriptive treasures. Who doesn’t want The Nycoptic Manuscripts, (unless you’re looking for the unabridged edition?)  Or, to eat the brain of a giant to get giant strength?  Or, a skill with a gold tooth? Nothing like doing a little desecration when you’re in the tunnels under the cemetery. It’s also got some decent interactivity … in place. A wooden plank laid out on the floor in an empty room … why is that there? That’s weird. Except it runs over a pit hidden by an illusionary floor. Pay the fuck attention, kiddos, or suffer for it. Several of the monsters get a retheme. Humans get to be shaggy subhumans, mutated by eating diseased brains (a nod to our British games?) while rats, in places, breathe fire. When this thing hits it hits well. A giant venus flytrap with little buds that look like brains. “The Yoinog do not find these “impossible brains” nearly as savory as the real thing, but a man’s gotta eat…” A sly little comment like that warms my heart. And the fact that it manages to take a standard monster, tweak it a bit, and then make it fit perfectly in to the adventure? Gold. We get a rough little order of battle in places and a decent number of traps and specials without it seeming like that’s all the dungeon it.

And yet I’m left feeling more than a little disappointed in it. The descriptions of the rooms are very workmanlike. Not much imagery to be found, and an emphasis on … I don’t know … the facts of the room? It tells you, matter of factly, what is in the room, without embellishment or joy. A main room has a couple of statues in it “On either side of the wall separating the two rooms is a statue of Veshakul-a, the goddess of death, similar to the one in area 19, although these are 5½’ tall.” And, there’s a gotcha or two, like a room whose doors swing shut and wizard lock. *sigh*. 

I get it that writing a good description is hard, but thats what sets an plain adventure apart from a good one. You gotta work this shit. And “This colony of rats made its way into Obb

Nyreb’s enchanted brain supply.” ain’t gonna do it for me. You want to describe the smell, the crunchy floor, and so on. Give them DM something to work with to riff on. The encounters don’t overstay their welcome, but in many cases they don’t really provide much in the way of that vibe that can turn a book roll on a table in to something that really hits home. 

This needs to be tightened up. The room descriptions need a good edit. Both to remove filler word and place important things first, and to amp up the room environments a bit. I’m not talking set piece shit, and there’s always a place for an empty chamber with just a spiral staircase in it, but rooms like the rats nest are a good example of what is just expanded minimalism. Which I do not like. And, once you look at that room and make it better, why not do the main rooms also?

Before I regert this one, I want to touch on the entrances to the dungeon. There are two. The main entrance is in a mausoleum in the cemetery. It’s got nothing special to it on the outside and the inside entrance is well hidden. It’s not gonna be easy for the party to find. And, the lead in to this adventure is nothing special either. What this means is there’s some implied work for the DM to do. The DM is going to have to conjure up a stake out in the cemetery, maybe some tracks, or the party following people at night. I like this. I know, I know, I usually bitch about the adventure supporting the DM. But, this doesn’t mean that we need to spoon feed the DM. You can absolutely leave things for the DM to embellish and build on. As long as you do it well. And I think this does. It uses only a sentence or two, if that, to set things up. But, once combined with the rumours table, the party is heading in the right direction and the DM can fill in this little bit, just as the DM might fill in an inn or town or hook to get the rumours from. The second entrance is in the woods behind the cemetery, which a certain rumour might lead the party to. Good job on the entrances, and the mausoleum especially, feels like your entering in to a dungeon.

https://princeofnothing.itch.io/no-artpunk-ii

By Daedalus
No Artpunk #2
1e
Levels 2-4

A MAGIC POOL grants knowledge of arcane spells to anyone who bathes at the full moon but in exchange, the bather’s physical and mental abilities are slowly depleted.

This 25 page adventure uses about nine pages to describe a dungeon with about 25 rooms. Good interactivity, for its size, with smatterings of good descriptions are detracted by a large amount of whitespace. Packs a decent punch in a wrapping that only a mother could love.

So, what do I mean by all of that? What we have here is what could be called, in Bryce jargon, a real dungeon. It’s got creatures, tricks, traps, and secrets to unlock. Interactivity, factions, and varied terrain. All of the great elements that surround and contribute to a great dungeon crawl. It’s got one of the better Dyson maps. Caves, rooms, same level stairs, a bridge over a chasm to cross, secret doors and statues all show up on the map, contributing to a vibe that is more than a simple map. And it noted major features on the map, along with a wanderers table, to help support the DM in play. My only complaint here, with the map, is that it feels rather constrained. As if the dungeon should be a bit larger. It’s not like the rooms are on top of each other, generally, but that it feels like it needs one more breathe ot two to really give it the expanse that a good dungeon needs. 25 rooms is no slouch of a five roomer, but the size makes it feel more like a good dungeon at the end of an investigation, rather than something that stands on its own.

I’m a big fan of the interactivity in this one. The place is chock full of stuff without it seeming like its full of set pieces. You’ve got a statue, pointing, in one of the first rooms. There’s a double dose here. Not only does the pointing statue involve some interaction, but, it also provides a hint to puzzles deeper in the dungeon. Another room, full of broken up furniture has an intact weapons rack in remarkably good shape. A mimic. And that’s something this dungeon does very well indeed: providing clues for the player that is paying attention. Bodies and abandoned campsites provide clues and hints as to what is going on. It ramps up the tension to find a dead body, and what killed it. The players get a bit worried. And are prepared for whats coming  … if they care to pay attention. And this dungeon does that over and over again. It’s never hitting you over the head with it, but it seems natural. Really well done.

And the other encounters, not falling in to this category of hints and puzzles/traps, tend to the more interesting side as well. Ye Olde Bridge Over The Chasm has spiders in webs, high above, providing a nice little encounter. And the creatures in the dungeon, the intelligent ones, have some goals an motivations. SOme things going on with them that the players could exploit. Never going too far, and not really forcing that interactivity on to the players, but it’s there for the DM, in their motivations, should the players try and do a good job of not just stabbing. 

Descriptions are hit or miss. Out first room is the entrance, of course, an opening in a low escarpment outside. A simple worked limestone post and lintel frame without a door. Weathered carvings on it. A dark cool and silent interior. That’s not bad. It’s also, I think, one of the best descriptions. So, good job with your mythic underworld entrance, but, things do tend to fall down after that. Simple facts with few appeals to imagery. It really needs more in this area. 

And it’s not helped by the god awful formatting. Two column, with a lot of the rooms taking a full column. This isn’t necessarily wordiness, but rather large margins and line spacing. There’s too much in the wat ot bolding, underlines, and bullets. It’s too much to take in at once. There’s an attempt to follow a rough outline for a room, noting general features up front and then going in to more detail in the bullets, but the spacing, and degree of formatting, is just too much to follow easily. 

This is a real dungeon. Or, at least as much as one can say that in 25 rooms. I’m not find of the lack of interesting descriptions, and the format is a mess to comprehend text with. But, the interactivity here, the understanding of what a dungeon should and should not be, is all here. That is pretty rare, indeed. But these days you don’t get to the Bryce Best list unless you’re firing on all chambers. (Which is a lie, I’m a hypocrite, but, whatever.) Nice to see this one. 

https://princeofnothing.itch.io/no-artpunk-ii