Tower of the Egg

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Thomas Denmark
Night Owl Workshop
B/X
Levels 6-8

Birthed from the warped intellect of Joam Trassis the Unnatural, who was one of the last great Eldritch Lords, the tower has been rediscovered. Once a proud testament to Joam’s insidious genius, the Tower of the Egg fell into legend, its existence thought to be expunged by the relentless tide of time, its horrors banished to oblivion. Yet, like the quiet rustle of a dead leaf on an autumn wind, whispers of its enduring presence began to permeate the hushed tavern corners. An erratic map, penned with feverish, tremulous strokes, has surfaced, alluding to the Tower’s clandestine sanctuary. If the legends and conjectures bear truth, and the Tower of the Egg indeed perseveres, hidden amidst the gnarled wilderness, then its dreadful progenitor may yet endure. Trassis’ grotesque creations, bred within that blighted monument, may still writhe in its shadowed recesses, awaiting the dread command of their master. And if such abominations continue to breathe, then the horrors and marvels housed within the Tower of the Egg remain, waiting to birth a new era of unnatural domination.

This forty page digest adventure uses about sixteen pages to feature a wizards tower with five levels and about twenty rooms. And man is it bad. I mean BAD bad. Seriously. But, hey, at least it’s bad in a whole new way!

Hey, it’s got a monster reference sheet at the back! I love those! That’s nice!

But it’s BAD. “Bryce, you say everything is bad.” Yes, well, everything is bad. But, this one. Whooooa. I mean BAD. You ready for this?

“An examination of the crude map through the lens of a read magic spell discloses an array of cryptic phrases – the key to the incantation. However, the language is an archaic dialect of the magical lexicon, a tongue that is relegated to the dust-laden pages of ancient tomes. Only a scribe or magic-user deeply immersed in the esoteric lore may be able to decipher its antiquated structure and meaning” That one paragraph for the front door. The second one. The first one is longer and even more purple.

No? Well then how about room one then? “This room is a 40’ x 40’ enclosure, it is an orderly immaculate space within the ancient tower. Its environment is uncannily pristine, free of the inevitable layer of dust one would expect from a room untouched for centuries. The chamber seems frozen in time, preserved in a state of arrested decay by the arcane enchantments woven into its very stones. Those who step foot within are the first to disturb its timeless tranquility in eons.”  Seriously? Those who step foot within are the first to disturb its timeless tranquility in eons? I’m supposed to use that to run this fucking room?

“This artifact is no ordinary key, but a cipher to unlock the stairwell that ascends to the next echelon of this godforsaken tower, beckoning the brave, or perhaps the foolhardy, to explore its dread heights further.” Jesus H fucking christ. Every single sentence in the tower is a shit fest of purple prose. It is SO tortured that I am beginning to wonder if The Boogeyman is to blame … AI. How about some leather armor you find? Here’s the entry: “Leather Armor +2: This is a magical set of leather armor that provides a +2 bonus to the wearer’s Armor Class.” Right? The description restates the item with just more words. That’s got to be AI, right?

Room after room. Paragraph after paragraph. But, the shit around the tower? That’s in a completely different style. It’s GOT to the designers real voice and the tower text has got to be procedurally generated. I don’t think I could come up with it normally even as an exercise on a bet. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve EVER seen prose this bad in an adventure. I’m not even sure I’ve seen writing this purple in a crappy Drizzle Durdan novel/

For a level eight adventure, this is basically a linear hack. Things pop out of stasis. Find the red key to open the next door, a red one. 

“To awaken the chamber from its slumber, one must utter the sacred incantation, each syllable resonating with the raw, primal power of creation and carrying the weight of forgotten eons. It is a rhythm that matches the heartbeat of the universe, a melody composed by the Eldritch Lords in the twilight of their dominion. With each spoken word, the room stirs, echoes of ancient power flickering in the mirrors like dying embers coaxed back into flame.” Jesus fuck … you just can’t make this shit up. 

Joke adventure is a joke. Come on man, if this how you want to be remembered as a designer?

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. The last two show you tower locations. Note the change in descriptive style between the throw-away town/overland journey and the tower. Although, the little story about finding the map is getting up there in prose also.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/439772/Wizard-Towers–Tower-of-the-Egg?1892600

Posted in Do Not Buy Ever, Reviews, The Worst EVAR? | 26 Comments

The Murk’s Curse

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Christopher Capone
Wicked Cool Games
OSE
Levels 2-3

Among the witch’s valley mist, The Murk, sinister fey shadows terrorize the forest, demon spirits haunt old ruins, and undead howl from the volcanic shrine.  Can the adventurer’s purge the vale of evil to gain its lost magic and riches?

This forty page adventure details three locations/adventures in The Murk, a misty forest. It’s got an interesting take on locations, and has some decent ideas and encounters. This is combined with some ok formatting as well. It’s not going to reach my Best levels, but as a first effort its get more fucking close than most big name designers will.

Ok, so, a section of land with a forest that is eternally misty during the day. A little town in it, with an abandoned town deeper in. People say there are fey around … and ruins deeper in. What this product delivers is something adjacent to thisWe do get a little town. It doesn’t overstay its welcome. There are a few people highlighted, and easy-ish to find. There’s a sentence or two with some keywords to help you run them, maybe a rumors section of things they can provide if asked and/or quests they could give or special shit they could do for the party. There’s decent use of bolding here to help the DM locate information. The first word or two of section toptic is bolded and, more importantly, relevant to the task at hand. So if its about Apples then its gonna start with Apples, bolded, not something like “If the party were to so inquire with Sir Buttface about the Apples in his orchard …” Put your fucking keyword first, like this dude does. There’s also a little “bullet” thing going on, although its ot really formalized. Important facts are separated well and easy to locate. In fact, all of the formatting seems … haphazard? But not in a bad way. Generally it lacks consistency. Different things are handled in different ways. That’s weird. But, also, I mean I can’t complain. It does it’s fucking job and thats what it is supposed to do. 

Descriptive text isn’t winning any awards but is also largely above average and generally good enough. Thin mists waft gently. Bramble thorns capping sharp obsidian slopes. An uneven floor covered in dozens of thick burnt down candles. It’s some alright descriptions. And, further, the DM text doesn’t generally overstay its welcome. Four pages for thirteen rooms, with each page having at least half of it taken up with a map and illustration. Dude keeps the text focused. 

But, I don’t want to talk about any of that. I’ve clearly rushed through that portion of the review. Formatting is decent, and descriptions are ok. Which, of course, is a compliment considering the source 😉

But, the adventures and vibe is what I want to talk about, mostly. There are three adventures. Some dude has lost his shadow, in the first. In the second you go to an abandoned town to Do Something and encounter the reason it was abandoned. Third, you go looking for a magic sword i some ruins/caves deep in The Murk. The first is a non-adventure. Dude has lost his shadow (fey shadow, not undead shadow) and want you to do something. There’s no real adventure here, at all, just a page noting the shadows stats and te fellow shadows he hangs around with. No real events or location to find them in, or anything else. Really just some stats for the most part. That did not give me high hopes.

But, the second and third adventures are more interesting. Both location based. The second is a town, abandoned,that is located inside a giant tree that has fallen. The third are some caves/shore/cliffs. Both of these have maps that are more open, but constrained. Kind of like the gatehouse/outside portions of Stonhell. Or, maybe, balley in B2/Caves of chaos. You have to image both without deeper dungeons. Maybe just the ogres cave or something scattered throughout. And, I’m not really communicating this well … the cope is smaller than either. But, I think both are an interesting concept. More open. And with encounters that are varied and interesting. Little sack dolls, murderous little bastards, inhabit the abandoned town, mostly. There’s a good mix of stuff to investigate, fuck with, and just stab. And the maps are annotated well,. They are keyed, but, also, make good use of the icons and drawings on it to pout major features on them, and then also the map is annotated with words like “Hidden Rong” or “Giant mushroom.” I really like the adventuring locales. Maps, concept, some folkloreish elements in the creatures without going heavy in that, interactivity, mildly evocative writing, formatting. It’s all good enough to make me not hate it and in some cases like the vibe.

Ok, so, maybe the descriptions could be better. And that first adventure sucks. But, I do want to mention one more thing, the thing that I think holds me back a lot. The overall atmosphere.

We see, from the marketing blurb, that “sinister fey shadows terrorize the forest, demon spirits haunt old ruins, and undead howl from the volcanic shrine.” And, yet, that really doesn’t come through in the setting. You get the idea that this is supposed to be a mist-shrouded landscape. And, from the tree log town, of a kind of shadowy town with these murderous little sack dolls. But the vibe that all implies is not really present. Sure, you get an individual description that is in the right area, but never in terms of a looming cohesive whole. Inside the abandoned town we get a scene with a “oil lamps slung from posts.” (Which are unlit,) And you get how, seen in the mist in an old tree log, this could have been very atmospheric. But, not in practice, and the descriptions doesn’t really lend itself to that. It’s trying, I think, but, overall the connectedness of the individual locations to the theme seems lost. The fey aspect, the shadowy forest … it just doesn’t come through at all in a meaningful way … in spite of a lot of the elements being there in the individual encounters. 

And this, I think, is what majorly holds it back from a Best category. I really like a lot of what this is doing. Sure, it’s a little fractured in places, but, I can live with a little of that, and even call it charming. And I might even have a desire to run this one, if only that tie that binds that much more present. But, hey, GREAT first effort!

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. You get to see the NPC and town overview, and the rumors and wanderers, both of which are ok but not the strongest either. A few of the encounters in the abandoned town or cliff adventure, or even one of those maps, would have helped the preview a lot.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/439349/The-Murks-Curse?1892600

Posted in No Regerts, Reviews | 1 Comment

The Scourge of Thunderhold

Posted on June 14, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Luiz Eduardo Ricon
Hexplore Publishing
OSR
Level 1?

Thunderhold: An ancient dwarven fortress built deep into a cliffside. Walls as strong as iron, stonework as intricate as a finely crafted gauntlet, a raging waterfall thundering through its main chamber. But why was it abandoned, so long ago? What are the secrets kept within its fortified structures? What treasures and perils it holds?

This 46 page adventure details a mighty dwarf fortress with three levels … and 24 rooms. It’s a basic dungeon, with basic and mundane room descriptions and poor;ly formatted to run. More churn for the ever churning march of the bad D&D adventures.

Mighty THUNDERHOLD! Gateway to the dwarf kingdoms! Deep is its chambers! Long ha sit been abandoned, before even man came to these lands! DARE TO ENTER ITS GATES AND EXPLORE ITS … uh … 24 rooms? Uh. OK. 

The designer is claminig this takes four sessions to complete. One in town. One travelling through the wilderness. One in the dungeon. And one more to defeat the LEVEL NINE DROW in the last room. A fucking level nine drow. Everything up to this point is all “a zombie” or “two skeletons” or “some giant centipedes.” And then a level nine drow, with undead minions. Uh uh. I’m all for a lack of balance in OSR games, but this is not what is meant by that statement.

Ok, so, town consists of some generic buildings and generic NPC’s. EVeryone is chipper, competent, and full of caring and compassion. IE: boring. One night a zombie shows up in the river that runs next to town. After that yo’re hired for 100gp each to go upriver to MIGHTY THUNDERHOLD and see whats up. 

This is, weirdly, the only good part of the adventure, the zombie attack. And by that I mean that there’s a little table of things that could happen to get the party involved. “Men march down the street with torches and pitchforks, heading toward the river” or “a captain of the town uard call upon men to join him on a mission.” or “the innkeeper rings the bell and yells WERE CLOSING, NOW!!” I think those all imply some things that I, as the DM, can work with. That captain is going to be pressing men in to service with a kick and a shove and a griff non sensea attitude of “you can go or i can gut you now!” The other two should be pretty easy to run as well. This is the last good thing, and the only good things, in the adventure.

Ok, wilderness time. You gotta travel through the wilderness to get to the dungeon. AT this point, major confusion ensues. Two days to reach the forest, a day to cross it if you use the road two if you do not, and then a day to get to the foot of the mountains and Thunderhold. Then, we get a long section telling us what happens if we follow the riverbanks. Or through the grain fields. What the fuck?! It makes no sense at all. But, along the way you pick up three little mini-quests of shit people want you to do in the dungeon/wilderness.

Congrats! You made it to the might dwarf fortress! Revel in its majesty! “A 30 ft x 20 ft room with empty shelves and racks. Stale and pungent smell. Mold covered barrels and crates piled up in one corner” No? Ok. “A collapsed room with rubble and debris.” No? Ok. “This partially crumbled square room smells of rot and decay. There’s moss and mold everywhere.” Majestic! Inspiring! Wonder & Awe!

I know, they sound short. But we forget that the rooms also have to include all of the door information. Yeah! Padding! It’s just padded out with useless detail. Longish descriptions that tell you nothing. A thundering waterfall in the next room? Good thing that sound is never mentioned before you get there. 

It’s just the usual garbage. Minimal descriptive text. Padded out shit. There’s nothing here of note. Just another POS clogging up the adventure stream. My heart despairs at the thought of people thinking that this is D&D.

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is eighteen pages. Which means, of course, that you don’t actually get to see anything of the adventure. *sigh*

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/439002/The-Scourge-of-Thunderhold–A-dungeon-crawl-adventure-for-starting-players?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 11 Comments

Should I make commenting harder to combat SPAM?

Posted on June 12, 2023 by Bryce Lynch

I’m getting hit with spam blasts a couple of times a day. I’m updating my filters each time, but they keep coming. And sometimes I’m out of pocket and the spam in the comments sticks around until I get to it.

I could make commenting harder. I don’t know, captcha, or some kind of account requirement or blacklist subscription or something else. Or I could just leave it along and do what I’m doing now.

Please spam this post with comments on this. Do you give a shit? Do you have strong personal feelings about one solution or another?

And, please excuse the non-review post. I do try to not do that.

Posted in Reviews | 44 Comments

Muddy Mess

Posted on June 12, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Daniel Kingsley
Ripped Tabard Adventures
Castles & Crusades
Level 5

Not all decisions are easy. Sometimes heroes find themselves in a Muddy Mess, where every decision has the potential to be the wrong one. […] players will be challenged with gnoll extortionists, fiendling conmen, and an angry druid with metal-eating monsters.

This 27 page adventure is about a town caught between a strip miner and a druid. I guess? It’s got long read aloud, hard to navigate descriptions, and is full of missing information. And, in the end, it’s a rather basic thing with a couple of larger humanoid battles.

So, a miner hires a foreman, who hires hobgoblins guards, and the foreman kills him and takes over the “mine.” By which I mean a water hose used for strip mining. Hence the literal muddy mess. Everything is stripped bare with just mud hanging around. Druid gets pissed and sends “metal eater” tentacle monsters to eat all the metal in town. Party arrives, needing a blacksmith, and is begged for help. If you help the town and kill the druid then strip mining continues and eventually, off camera, some druids show up and destroy everything and curse the party for a year.  If you help the druid then the final battle is against the town-ish/miner and the town is abandoned. No other outcomes are encouraged. Hence the figurative muddy mess and “no good solutions” mentioned in the text. Seems ham-handed to me, but what do I know. 

There are some references, here and there, to some decent things. The initial mud description is a good one, gunking up and coming off in slabs. And here and there anNPC has a decent motivation, like the two dwarves shopowners who don’t really seem to give a shit. Cause they don’t. Cause they been through trouble before and they know they just have to wait for things to settle and the short-lived people to die. Heh. That’s a nice trait for someone with a long life span and perhaps the only really good description of a dwarf personality trait I’ve seen. 

Otherwise, this thing got hella issues. 

Read-aloud is LONG, and frequent. Monologues are never good, especially when they span multiple paragraphs or even almost a page. That’s a bad way to handle the situation. You want something with more interactivity, a back and forth with the players and so on. I like to play with my phone when listening to long monologues. Besides, they usually impart no information anyway. 

Descriptions are a pain also. Multiple paragraphs of DM text for the DM to slog through. Which makes it hard to find the information you’re looking for. The game pauses. Phones come out. Whatever was of interest in the text is beyond usable because of the delay. It makes for a boring game session.

The editing here is quite bad, and it starts at the first words. “The Angry Druid is a Castles and Crusades adventure …” No. Maybe that was the working title, but its now A Muddy Mess. The hired hobgoblins are a mess. They are only obliquely referred to in places and never actually make an appearance. “[the townfolks] are angry that [the miner] hired hobgoblins as city guards.” But the guards never show up, in any way. I guess they are referred to in the battle section, but that’s it. No vignettes. No actually encountering them anywhere. The water cannon is the same way. It’s just kind of referred to a couple of times and never shows up in the text. I guess I may have missed it, but I looked several times. Again, just obliquely referred to a couple of times.

There’s an entire section that is weirdly out of place. IThe text is describing some gnolls showing up for protection money and then it launches in to what looks like the hooks for the actual adventure? But that’s after, a long way after, the initial appeal for help. It’s almost like the entire thing is a stream of consciousness writing endeavor. “Oh, yeah, I guess I should include this.”  And the metal monsters, which everyone in town refers to, don’t really show up at all except when you meet the druid. “They are hiding in the woods, waiting for the druids signal.” Uh huh. 

It’s just a mess of an adventure. Hard to grok. Hard to run. Hard to dig through. Things missing. 

No bueno.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. Enjoy that read-aloud and the descriptions! So, I guess a good preview, if you imagine the entire adventure is like that preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/439343/Muddy-MessCastles-and-Crusadesv1?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments

Lair of the Frog

Posted on June 10, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Chaoclypse
Self Published
Generic/Cairn
Level ?

The Lair contains dark, eldritch secrets and way, way, too many frogs. Survive its horrors, and you may eventually be granted audience with the mythical Frog God…

This twelve page digest adventure features a dungeon with twelve rooms and six outdoor locations. And I’m using “locations” very loosely here. Because te designer seems to have forgotten the primary purpose of an adventure. IE: this is garbage.

“Special Thanks to Chris McDowall for his helpful posts and videos on adventure creation.” Ought oh! I don’t know shit about McDowall, I think?, but I do know that endorsement, of Chris, by this designers, is eyebrow raising, after reviewing this adventure.

Because tis Crap. Let us look at the hook. It is, of course, a d6 table. Because the designer does not understand randomness and its purpose in an adventure. Anyway, our hooks are “You love frogs.” or “You hate frogs.”   or “Rumors of treasure.” and so it goes. Yes, I know, we don’t need hooks. But, when offered, we do expect more than this, correct? No? We’ve given up all hope of anything and everything? Nothing makes sense anymore? Everything is meaningless, now, in 2023. Time to talk to Ohm, my friend!

Ok, ok, let’s look at the actual adventure. The one with a content warning for “Body horror, Hallucinogens, Cults”. Let’s see here. We’ve got a short wilderness crawl before getting to the frog lair. It’s six locations, five of which you’ll visit, so, essentially a linear wilderness. Oh. They all fit on one page. Oh. Let’s see, location one is “The border between the outside world and the valley of the frogs. The journey starts perilously, and climbing down the hills is difficult.” Oh, wait, that the adventure summary. The real location is … oh, no, that IS the location. That’s location one. Good luck suckers! “Starts perilously” Fuck off man. Fuck right off. You know its the designers fucking job to define what “start perilously” means, right? Location 5, the Weel. “Well, well well. It’s a well. Those foolish enough to climb inside find …” That’s it. Nothing more. No table of whats inside even. This is utter and complete garbage. I’m fucking insulted, for the fucking hobby, by this “adventure.” 

THe reallair if twelve rooms on four pages. Each room gets lots of space for all of those fucking door/exit descriptions that some of you fuckwits insist is worthwhile. Bask ye heathens in the glow of “Passageway to an intersection leading to four and five.” Yeah, verily, the best of all exit descriptions! Perhaps rivaled only by “Door to four!” Fuck you all.

Our room descriptions have a header, like “Tadpole nest” which is good. The descriptions come in bullets, ose style, which is a decent format. But, the designer doesn’t know how to use them. “Pile of unusually large tadpoles” is not a description for the nest. It brings little to life. Oh, oh, the treasure room! “Piles of green jewels and treasure.” I fucking hate my life. THis is what it has become. This shit. 

You know, there was a chance here. The wandering table, perhaps the only thing in the adventure with ANY decent ideas, has this entry, which is by far the best “Large tadpoles carried in the arms of human-sized bipedal frog” Meh. But, nursing from a human that is carrying it? That would indeed be the body horror and culty shit we were promised? Cause there is no body horror and no cults, from the warning, in this adventure. At all.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see that wilderness crawl. No, thats the crawl, not a summary of it.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/439334/Lair-of-the-Frog-God?1892600

Posted in Do Not Buy Ever, My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Reviews | 18 Comments

A Taste of the Goods

Posted on June 7, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Grant Howitt
Soulmuppet Publishing
Best Left Behind/OSR
Level 1?

The Cryptdiggers are hired to reclaim a wizard’s stolen property: bandits hijacked a shipment of potions to their dilapidated fort half a day’s ride from the city. Retrieving the box of special black-bottled potions is paramount—anything else is simply useful to sell.

This four page adventure is set in a ruined fort (which means a small thirteen room manor?)  There are decent imagery descriptions scattered throughout, but the entire thing is one of the most confusing masses of text I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s also most like the layout was randomized. 

Ok, so, I think some bandits got ahold of some magic potions and drank them. That’s about all I am sure of. Seriously. That’s about it. Cause this thing is a FUCKING MESS. “Layout by Jean Verne.” with three different editors and THIS thing is the result? More on that in a bit.

First we note the nice things. It’s got some ok imagery in the descriptive text. “RUBBISH PILE Rubble and bones, shattered glass and a horse’s yellow-green corpse. Two Dogs gnaw at the horse.” or “FINE BEDROOM Presently damp and grim with plants growing up the walls.” I like the damp and fine combination. It gives the picture of moldy, peeling wallpaper and dripping plaster ceilings. And that’s what good writing should do: provide more than the words on the page. Mouldering tables, scorched tapestries, lumps of meat, “Vomit and filth in the far corner” in a room with two bandits passed out in it. I’m there!

But, the problems here are many.

There’s a map. It has no key. “Dormitories” are shown in the text. Where is it on the map? WHo knows. “Washroom/Chapel” where is it on the map? No idea. Seriously, it’s just a little hand drawn map and there is NO indication, AT ALL, where the various rooms are supposed to be. It’s label after label in the adventure buyt nothing on the map.

And the text is mostly just a confusing mass. “You can squeeze through the burned out rooms damaged wall” one of the rooms tells us. Uh … ok. Where is that? Why is it in this room? 

Perhaps my favorite is this text. We just got a description of the ARea, telling us about a nest in the rafters and ruined stone overgrown with moss. Nothing specific. And then we get the rubbish pile, that I quoted above, that ends with “A wagon marked with the wizards sigil is parked nearby.” Sure. Better, I think, to put that in the area description instead of a random rubbish pile description, but, whatever. Then comes this gem:

“STORE To the south, D6 unopened potions were removed from straw-filled transport crates. To the north, a bandit— who recently drank the Red Gem and Flame potions—is having a paranoid fireside conversation with a friend’s corpse. He is scared the wizard sent someone to retrieve the potions and kill them. The roof was repaired using the gateway door.”

TO the south of fucking what? The store? What store? There’s no store been mentioned. And there’s nothing on the map to indicate a store. The roof? What roof? The one to the store? WHat fucking gateway? What gateway are you referring to? WHy do I care about the roof repair? This entire thing just appears out of nowhere. I promise you I am not leaving out context. It’s patchy rain and pigeons fluitterring” in the Area description, with no overview, and then the rubbish pile and then this. 

The trend continues throughout the adventure. Just random references to other places. Three editors. Three fucking editors. A layout person. FOR FOUR FUCKING PAGES. And you can’t do something coherent with this?

I have absolutely no fucking idea at all what is going on in this adventure. Bandits drink potions and get sick and mutate, I think. But, more than that, the wheres and overall context of the fort/manor? No clue. I am completely fucking lost. 

Whatever fucking idea these people had failed miserably. No order of battle. Nothing to make a whole of the individual parts. I get the feeling there is something here … hence the great imagery, but it’s so addled that me and my sixth grade education can’t figure it out. Back to being a double nought spy I guess!

This is $3 at the publishers webstore. No preview. WHich is a good thing because $3 for four pages would probably mean I wouldn’t buy it.

A Doom To Speak – A Taste of the Goods
Posted in Reviews | 6 Comments

Blub-Glub Pit

Posted on June 5, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Tiagp da Paz and Iago Ferreira
Papa-Figo
OSR?
Level ?

In the middle of a forest, which grew where an old city perished in ruins, a pit of stone resists time. Vines slowly wrap it while its dark and wet interior hides the savagery and devotion of fish-like humanoids. Mud and mucus mix chaotically!” Grab your torches and come to explore this dank and dark dungeon!

This 22 page digest adventure features a kua-toa themed dungeon with about eleven(?) rooms. I don’t know what to make of it. I’d say it leans to the bad art-punk style of things, expect it actually has a keyed dungeon with “Descriptions.”I might call it an art-forward project, except it’s low on art.

Based on the cover I had high hopes. The canonical dungeon, for me, is a hole in the ground that some losers go in to explore/loot the mythic underworld. Which is probably why I like that first level of The Darkness Beneath so much. Anyway, that cover brings it, doesn’t it? The rest, though, is just bad. All parts of it.

The map is bad. Well, I mean, it’s got that isometric thing going on, which I like. SHowing elevation changes with a couple of steep muddy slopes in the dungeon. But, beyond that, it’s not keyed traditionally. And, while I don’t have a problem with that, in theory, I do have a problem with this in practice. It’s grouped in to a number of zones, six I think. Each zone has a mini-map noting rooms in it. So, we’re flipping to the correct zone, on the correct page (which is cross-referenced, thank Blibdoolpoolp. But, then, we get a weird mix of keying. SOme rooms are Room A, Room B, Room C. Not my favorite, since “Room A – Mucky & slime guard chamber” brings more descriptive text to the table than “Room A”. And, then, it goes on to call some rooms “Kitchen” or Guard Room. This kind of shit drives me crazy. I don’t want to have to hunt to find the room/feature I’m looking for while the party explores. So, you can do it, but you have to do it in such a way that I’m not killing time during play trying to find the fucking room the party is appraching. I HATE it when the adventure forces the DM to have “Dead air time” hunting for information. The end all be all of dungeon keying is not the traditional room/key, but, fuck, it also works well and if you’re gonna do something different then don’t lose what traditional keying brings to the table during actual play.

It uses randomness badly. Our hooks, genetic as can be, are presented as a table. Why? You really want me to roll on it for a hook? Sure, I can pick, as most sane people will, if they use the designers hooks, but why a random table for them? It smacks of a lack of understanding of what randomness is used for in play. And don’t get me started on the fucking treasure table. When you make it to the final room/temple then the DM gets to roll on a random tables for what treasure is on the alter.  “2d8 luxury objects, like chalices and mirrors” Fucking great. Wonderful. You do know that the purpose of a published adventure is to bring things to the DM that they can’t do on their own? To save time? To think about it and agonize over it before hand so that, during the play, the DM is able to present the party with something that they actually care about? That would seem to get at the core purpose of an adventure: assisting the DM. But, again, no, Roll on a table for a random treasure item. O can’t express enough how much I hate this. It’s a complete and total lack of understanding of what the purpose of a published adventure is. 

And the descriptions. Ug. “Room A – Serves as the kua-toas hunting weapons storage.” Well fucking thanks for that. I am inspired. That will result in a great description from me, the DM, to my players. Or, how about “Kitchen – In this part of the cave, the Blub-Glub cook their food. What is gathered from the hunting is taken to the kitchen and properly prepared.” Yes, you did just describe the purpose of a kitchen. It’s like saying “Bedroom – This is where people sleep.” What the fuck is the fucking point of this? 

And it’s all generic. “Moderately difficult to fall down the slope.” Just sta the fucking thing for B/X or Labyrinth Lord. We all know how to convert the fucking thing. 

Yeah, it looks like a dungeon. It has a key and descriptions. And that’s about the fuck all it is. It’s like people have never ever seen a real fucking adventure before.

This is $2.50 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages. You really only get to see the suck ass hooks table and a mini-map. Good luck with figuring out if you want to buy it based on that. And this review.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/438142/BlubGlub-Pit-Dungeon?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 7 Comments

Altogether in Cahoots

Posted on June 3, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Steve Jensen
Archaic Adventures
Generic/Universal
Level ?

An illegal brothel in Havaroon City has burnt to the ground, conceivably along with the brothel’s greatest patron “Count Edmund Druet” who is missing and soon to be an embarrassment to the King’s Court. There are those that blame the courtesens for starting the fire, while others believe something more sinister is afoot. Investigators wanted…

This forty page adventure is a missing persons investigation in a burnt down brothel. I question why I care that it is basically boring and moderately incoherent.

Count Fancypants is missing. He frequented this fancy brothel (no relation.) It burnt down yesterday. It would be an embarrassment if he died there. Brothels are officially illegal in the city, so the police(!) can’t investigate … because that would be admitting they exist. So the party get involved with a fixer of the king. That part is pretty good. It’s the kind of fucked up nonsense that society actually runs on. From here on, though, it’s all nonsense. And not in the good way that I like.

The DM is to hand the party a witness sheet for each person in the brothel. The cook, the madam, and a few of the girls. FUll background bio’s and their sworn testimony about the arson. (That’s a little too much civilization for my tastes … unless we’re in Evil Elflandia, which we’re not.) Anyway, you get to then go question the witnesses, who will only give their additional information if you ask the exact right question. There’s a thread about one of the girls having a dude in her room … maybe Count Fancypants? No, an abusive ex-husband. A newspaper reporter is running around reporting everything the party does/find/leaks, so, that’s a check on the old Fire & Torture party method of investigation,, I guess. He’s not really supported, at all, in the text though in any meaningful way. Meh.

Anyway, there’s two ways to solve the mystery. Method one involves one of the party members being handsome, so the selkie, pretending to be one of the girls, takes a liking to them and tries to drown them in the lake. Which should lead the party to Count Fancypants’ body. The other method involves some weird convoluted lie detection scheme and finding discrepancies in her story with another girl, in a tertiary manner. And then not falling for her 21 year old “I guess it could have been Frank, I don’t know, I am confused. This is all so confusing.”

Did I mention the three page read-aloud at the start? It’s hard to get excited about anything that follows after a shit–fest like that.

It’s just crap. Everything is crap. Info scattered all over the place. A convoluted story to break apart. A deus ex resolution. Nothing to help the DM run it, in the way of formatting or quirks. It’s just drudgery. That’s what I like in my D&D games. Drudgery.

There’s nothing really here. Things like this sap my will to live. My will to write. My will to game. My will to hang out in the lake with seven naked chicks, drinking. When your creation does that to someone then you really know you’ve failed.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $3. The preview is ten pages. You get to see a couple of the NPC Bio sheets that the party will get. Joy. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/436770/Altogether-in-Cahoots-an-Atherrian-Adventure-Module?1892600

Posted in Do Not Buy Ever, Reviews | 10 Comments

The Tower of the Twisted Mage

Posted on May 31, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Hexplore Publishing
Hexplore Publishing
B/X
Level 1

Orin, the Wizard is missing. And his apprentice is hiring adventurers to go look for him in his last known whereabouts: The infamous Tower of Zaradon, the Twisted Mage.

This 28 page adventure features a “tower” with four levels and about sixteen rooms, using about nine pages to do so. So generic that I had to check, multiple times, to ensure I had not reviewed it previously. It’s throw-away garbage.

You see a dude in the market place looking around. I hope you go talk to him because if you don’t then there’s no adventure to be had! An apprentice, named either Kendrick or Cedrick (both names are used for him … and not on purpose …) wants you to go to this tower that his master was exploring and never came back from. Why doesn’t he? Well, gentle reader, you see, this is just a garbage adventure. In a garbage adventure we don’t bother even mentioning such things. But, whatever. 

You walk down a country road to get to the tower. On the road you have an exciting encounter from a table! Just one though … from the table of eight. So, let’s see … “A tree has fallen across the path, blocking the way forward. The players must find a way to remove the obstacle or go around it.” Joy! Wonder! Excitement! I’m so glad I’m playing D&D tonight! I had been looking forward to it all week! Our boots might get muddy! Ohs nos! Look, if you’re just gonna force one encounter then don’t use a fucking table. A table was used for wanderers, if the PC”s are dawdling, or exploring, or some such. Not for a programmed encounter. Instead of saying “A group of bandits has set up a makeshift roadblock. They demand that the players pay a toll to pass.” then write a short paragraph about the Murphy Boys Independant Tax Agency.” 

Congrats. You made it to the tower. You may now enjoy majestic room descriptions that say things like a LARGE room” a room with “HIGH ceilings.” Don’t fucking do this. I know you think you’re doing right, but stickin gin an adjective. But, maybe, pick a better one? Large and high have little meaning. Use a thesaurus. Conjure an image in your mind. Describe that. Ceiling tower overhead. Or loom overhead, or stretch in to the shadows above. Don’t fucking say high. The purpose of a room description is to inspire the DM. To conjure an image in their heads that they can riff on for the players benefit. Large don’t do that.

And, maybe, watch your rooms text for padding also. Telling us that the room has two doors, as the maps clearly fucking shows, and has no encounters or traps in it is not helpful text in the room description. What’s the fucking point? You think there might be some, that the designer left out? Why? Why the fuck say there are no traps or encounters in the room? You don’t even consistently do it for all the rooms with no encounters or traps! “After defeating the rats, the players may find some treasure scattered among the bones.” Why? Just why?! That sentence does nothing. N O T H I N G. Oh oh oh, and then it sticks the door descriptions IN THE NEXT ROOM. So if the door from room one to room two is described, you know where it is described at? In room two. Room one tells us there IS a door, but the actual description is in room two. Now, I know my readers, you’re thinking “that could be ok”. Maybe. But what if room two is a corridor. It makes no fucking sense at all. 

My favorite, absolute favorite, encounter that I may have even seen in my entire worthless piece of shit life, is the mirror maze in this adventure. “To go forward, the PCs must pass three Wisdom saves. Failing any of the saves forces a restart. If they pass all three, they reach the end of the maze”. Tedium. Just an exercise in tedium. Just like the fallen log encounter. Tedium. Nothing but tedium. Tired of reading the fucking word tedium yet? Too fucking bad. I had to deal with this adventure. 

When you leave the tower you meet 1d6 rival adventurers. That’s all you get. Nothing more. 

There is NOTHING here. The same room concept, a room with a stone pedestal in the center with a glowing crystal on it, appears twice. Not for thematic reasons. Not for puzzle reasons. Just because. It’s the most basic of descriptions. Dull and boring. Padded text. Unimaginative encounters. Tedious play. No specifics to bring something alive. 

This then is the curse of man. To be forced to create only to spew shit eternally.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages. Because of all of the advert padding you don’t actually get to see any rooms. Shitty preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/437138/The-Tower-of-the-Twisted-Mage-A-OneShot-Dungeon-Crawl-Adventure-for-Starting-Players?1892600

Is it possible to live a simple life without flax seed and hemp indoctrination?

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 22 Comments