tenfootpole.org

By Jacob Fleming
Gelatinous Cubism
OSE
Low Levels (ha!) to Mid Levels.

In the desolate and forbidding canyon lands, Hurloror Canyon is home to only the bravest and most hardy. The road that leads through it is the only way to navigate this dangerous wilderness. Travelers and merchants alike must face the canyon so that trade and commerce between city states can carry on. Much depends on the road remaining open and unimpeded. Fort Davelmag, the only safe refuge in the canyonlands, stands as a beacon for weary travelers and a testament to the will of the lawful. Once a military fortification built to hold off the advancing forces of chaos, now a way station for merchants and caravans, with a small detachment loyal to the crown stationed here. Now the residents of the Fort face a far more devious threat than the harsh environment or hungry beasts. Through the Valley of the Manticore has players traverse winding sandstone slot-canyons and explore natural cave systems rumored to contain hidden relics of immense value and magical power. Sooner or later they may realize that they are mere pawns in a game being played by an unnaturally intelligent monster. They will need cunning as well as strength in order to overcome this bizarre and terrifying tale.

This 48 page digest adventure, not really a hex crawl, contains a small region, a kind of valley in the desert, with a few small dungeons and a few quests in a trading post related to them. It’s formatted rather well, generally, and is trying to be interactive in places, but comes off a bit bland, which i snot helped by the minimalist descriptive style.I don’t hate it, and it’s intriguing in some ways … but not enough to run it.

Hex map, six mile hexes, with the map being six hexes wide and four tall. There is a town, a small desert watch/caravan stop, described as well as four dungeons, ranging from four to sixteen rooms. The dungeon maps are rather simple and the hex map has some roads through it, with the dungeons hanging off the road … with a couple of exceptions. Two two not on side roads consist of “head up in to the hills and figure out why the spring aint flowing anymore” and “follow the manticore back to its lair.” I mention this because this is listed as a hexcrawl when, in fact, it’s just a small region. All of the dungeons are related to subplots going on in the fort.

The forts your home base. The militia at the fort are on edge; a manticore has shown up and ate two of them. And, also, Frank the guard killed one of the caravan people stopping for reupply, they are pissed and not leaving until justice is done .. and he claims he don’t remember doing it though he obviously did. Also, the forts water supply is drying up. Also, the caravan leader wants a tomb robbed. Also, some other merchants kids went off to rob a different tomb. 

Formatting is good. You get a little description for each room and some indents and bolding to help call out some special features that appear lower down in the text. Essentially, it’s paragraph form, if the paragraph is short and references other information well. And has appropriate cross-references. There’s an exception to two the formatting being well done … the overview of the fort, for example, is essentially all paragraph and could have done with some indents/bullets/bolding, etc to help call out the more important pieces. But, overall, not bad at all and fits the needs.

Interactivity is ok. Meh, better than ok, I guess. Each dungeon has a couple of traps and a secret or two to explore. Teleporter, Well of Souls, etc. There’s an altar in one that you have to make a sacrifice at in order to open a secret door. The advice given is to be generous in how you treat the word “sacrifice.” I can handle that, and prefer things that way … let the DM interpret the player intentions. Money, a dead body, spilt blood, whatever. It’s the intention that counts 🙂 I guess I’m unhappy with the interactivity because of the lack of depth here. It’s all pretty self-contained and, given the small size of the dungeons, theres only so much room to get your interactivity on. 

The real issue with this thing is that its a minimally keyed adventure. A minimal key that LOOKS like more than that.

The entries FEEL like they have some weight to them. About six per page, or so, in two column digest format should be ok. And they are all a couple of paragraphs long with some bullets following for more information on specific room details/secrets. That should be cool, right? 

But it’s not. 

Let’s take a look at a couple of entries, shall we? “Giant Scorpions [incline state block] are kept here as pets. The floors here are slick with rotting blood and scattered with bones.” or “a group of gnolls [stat block] are eating meat from a recent hunt around a fire.”

You see, now, I hope and pray, what I mean by a minimalistic description. These are about at the level of the more interesting B2 description, with orcs shooting dice. And while that level of description is better than just “5 gnolls”, it’s not by much. Especially in 2022. When looking at these descriptions it/s pretty obvious what the issue is: conclusions. “Are kept here as pets” is a meaningless statement. It attempts to explain why there are scorpions here. As does “From a recent hunt” in the gnoll description. Descriptions which draw conclusions, explain history, and meaningless backstory are not good descriptions. Good descriptions actually DESCRIBE. What, about the room and scorpions, would make a player say “oh, they are pets!” That should be the description. Put them on chains. Put a collar on them. Something. The same with the gnolls. Put a carcass, hung upside down with an arrow in it, in the room, with maybe something fun done with the guts. “Ah!” the players says “they have just killed it on a hunt!” It is the job of the designer to bring the environment to life and inspire the DM so they can do as much for the players. And this don’t do that. Again and again it don’t do that. Again and again it is a minimalistic description that, in some cases, somehow takes up A LOT of space.

“The door to this room is trapped. If triggered there is a poison needle that will stab whoever tripped it. However the poison used on the needle is from one of the scorpions kept in room 3 and is not a lethal dose. [Poison effects follow]” This is all garbage. It is all meaningless. It is all padding. It is built up justification. It’s a door with a poison needle trap [poison effects.] Done. IF triggered … really, IF? We don’t do if’s when writing. 

It does this over and over again. Padding to no effect. Minimalist descriptions. The adventure LOOKS good. The formatting is nice. The art is nice. It’s on the right track to providing a little sandboxy region to have some fun in. But, it’s weak. Very much so. Writing good descriptions is hard. I think it’s the hardest part. I don’t hate this, but, I’d pick something better.

Oh, shit, I do want to mention, though, that this has some great monster selection. A roper shows up at an interesting time. The use of a scorpionoids, a black pudding, akrell. The fucking manticore itself in an arid environment. Really good monster selection here.

This is $10 at DriveThru. No preview because it’s broken. 🙁

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/400889/Through-the-Valley-of-the-Manticore?1892600

By Lord Eldrad Wolfsbane
Self Published
B/X
Levels 1-5 (Quite the range, eh?)

You all meet in a a loud and smokey tavern! It’s a sad time for the quaint village of Valehaven. For the bawdy son of the portly mayor and his foppish and foolish friends have went missing. The foolish group of young adventurers went North into the Old Fell Forest some two weeks ago. They sadly and alarmingly have not returned. Dark and ominous tales are whispered about the foul Old Forest. The party is hired by the portly mayor to find out the whereabouts of a foolish group of adventurers far to the north into the Old Forest. The mayor Miles Kaxzwell is a pale fat balding winy self righteous type of man who truly believes himself far superior to others as he is of noble blood! His “son” and his adventuring party of his friends, left a few weeks ago and nothing has been heard from them since. The people of Valehaven don’t seem to be sad at all.

This 28 page digest adventure is a series of scenes. It’s cute, if you’re in to reading things.  This isn’t really an adventure. It’s more a series of ideas, strung together and not really in a form to run. 

Eldrad is an idea machine. He does a great job coming up with things and jotting down terse and memorable things about them. You got the whole “get hired by the mayor to find his son and friends” things from the intro blurb, right? One of the rumors is “We hopes that mayor’s son and his friends don’t come back! They was knocking up the entire village! Even their own sisters, aunts and cousins!” Also, the mayor has fifteen sons. Also, he has multiple wives and gets rid of them Henry 8 style. THis theme is repeated everywhere in the small town. Also “Barracks: Here is the upstairs of a gigantic warehouse and store is where the barracks are. Various distant kin to the mayor and hangers On our employees Town guards. Talk around town if they’re very corrupt.” Thus, the repetition builds to something that even the most dense party can’t ignore. But, hey, there’s gold! It’s a fun little thing. I like it a lot. The town goes on to describe the local temple, with the line “He had quite and impressive torture chamber where he does inquisitions parties for the nobility as he tortures people for the crowd’s amusement. It is all work for the gods!” Uh hu uh huh … getting the picture? DId I mention that staying in the stable csts 2cp a night and the poorhouse only costs 1cp a night … ? Eldrad does a really good job. Everything really works together to paint the scene.

The writing, the evocative imagery, is really well done, when he engages in it. “A mysterious stone archway opens the way into the forest wall of the Old Forest after a day of travel.” Or, maybe “The Old Forest has huge ancient pines so big that it would take 20 men to surround one of these trees. The light is dim and the ground covered in pine straw. A few chatterings of birds above is the old sounds of life. The old cobblestone road continues into the bleak dim light. From above, giant pinecones rain down and one smashes one of the militiamen causing his head to explode and gore, brains, blood, eyes and teeth splat onto everyone and everything around! Giant Squirrels are protecting their territory!“ So, yeah. And, if you find the diary of a certain halfling out in the forest, a dead halfling mind you, and bring it back to his beloved in town then … “If Matilda Berrywine is told about the death of Tommy Took, she climbs to the top of the local temple and jumps to her death.” Yeah. Eldrad knows what he’s doing.

But, also, man, the thing is a fucking mess. The maps are handdrawn and then, maybe, a photo taken of them? They are blurry as fuck. And the garden in town? “It’s guarded by a wood golum named Oak tree Edd who will chase anyone away from the garden who don’t belong.” And then there’s “The Pit: The mayor brings in monsters from all over as well as adventures in most of the time on Lucky townspeople to fight to the death for gold and betting. The arena can hold a thousand people in its seats.” The vibe is all mixed up. We go from local hick inbreeding to a community of thousands with magic wood golems at the garden. It’s mismatched.

But, alas, all is not well in Eldradville. Could it be the treasure? “Treasure: EP: 2000, GP: 1000, Magic: Axe +1” Certainly, not awe-inspiring … Well, though, we are a just and merciful reviewer .. .how about the monsters? “30 zombies” Hmmm, while I’m enamored with the number 30, and thus the implication that this is NOT combat, I’m afraid that just will not do. And points to the main problem. Or, one of them anyway.

The road not taken is that this is just a series of scenes. You walk down the right path and encounter Z. Then as you sleep X happens. Then you meet B the next morning. This is, then, a home adventure. The kind you scrawl on a piece of paper two hours before the game because you need something. I think we can do better in a published adventure, yes?

But, more importantly, Eldrad doesn’t follow though. FOr while we get all of these great bits in town, about one great bit per location and several more scattered through the text … he can’t seem to sustain this. Thus a barrow complex has three barrows, with one bit per barrow. Sure, there are three numbered location, or six, or whatever, ut only one concept. It’s not a dungeon. It’s a scene. Everything is a scene. Everyone is a point in time with little to connect it. If it were Moria it would be three scenes and nothing more. They are unfulfilling. If the monster is the centerpoint then you get a bit with the monster and nothing about the environment. All this is a collection of ideas and nothing more. Here’s an ideal for this thing. Run with it. These are not adventuring locales. For every good rumor there are sixteen meh ones that don’t do anything r are not special at all. 

“On the second morning, no matter where the party has stayed early in the Morn, a stench is in the air, smells of beer, wine and unwashed ass, a visit from some locals. A crowd of about 27 smelly peasants Say…”

Empty.

Great fucking imagination, but you need to sustain it to the logical end to create an actual adventure. As is, it’s performance art.

This is $3 at DriveThru. There is no preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/398450/Terror-in-the-Old-Fell-Forest?1892600

By Simon Carryer
Simon Carryer Games
B/X
"Low Levels"

Few suspect the depths of danger, depravity, and adventure that can be found Under the City. Maggot-men, sewer gators, oozefolk, basilisk cultists, street gangs, psychic toads, and more

This six page dungeon contains six levels, one per page, with about twelve rooms per page, or around seventy rooms. Essentially a collection of one page dungeons, it does a decent job in setting up interesting things going on, but, presumably due to length constraints, fails in any meaningful descriptions. Also, it’s better than most one pagers and better than most traditional adventures. So, you know, you could easily do worse than running this.

I want to believe. I want to believe in the short format adventure. In something that doesn’t overstay its welcome but manages to delver hit after hit in the encounters it presents. And thus my forays, again and again, in to that pit of despair known at DriveThru, endless searching for the treasure that I just know MUST be there. This is pretty close.

The pages are in landscape and central to each one is a little isometric drawing of the dungeon levels. This helps. A lot. You get to visualize little elevation changes and major features in rooms, like a giant demon skull. Thus the room descriptions, which we are going to be getting to in just a bit, are augmented by the visuals on the map. And, while this has always been the case in a good “top down” map, the iso maps, a decent one anyway, do a better job of displaying the levels and providing the extra Umph needed. In a one pager, anyway … cause dense exploration maps with good keys still trump everything I’ve seen so far. 

Okey doke, so, we get absolutely NO intro text to this. In fact, we get almost no explanation at all on what is going on. You have to learn through reading the text. The wanderers on level one are 1d6 dead men or 1d5 merry japers or Blind Betty. WTF?!!? Read on, in to the keys, to learn more and get the context you need to run it! Which is all “orc rebellion in G1” … and I find fine. Not everything needs to be spelled out ahead of time.; telling the “plot” through the keys is fine. It will break down eventually, but, in something like this, I’m more than happy to learn, through a key on level two, that the dead mens leader is, in fact, dead, and buried in a tomb and still provides sound advice and leadership to his (bandit) gang. And thus the keys build on each other, over time, to provide more than the sum of their parts. That’s A Good Thing(™)! 

Multiple entrances in to the dungeon, from the town above. (L1 is a sewer, and I’m gonna be fine with t since it’s the first level of something deeper) And multiple ways down, all outlined briefly. Wanderer tables for each level. Rumor tables fr each level. This all takes about one half of the first column for each level, leaving the rest of the three column text for the room keys.

So, yeah, Blind Betty. The Merry Japers. The Dead Men. This is all text fucking book ways of doing monsters. They have fucking names. THE troll, not A troll. You WANT to know more. The very names give them life and something to springboard and riff off on town and with the NPC’s. That’s the fucking way you do things! And did I mention there are cross-freferences? To the man-maggots?!

And the actual encounters tend to be fully of interesting things. Or, perhaps, situations and NPC;s. One of the rooms on the first floor reads:

7. Old Church, Lower Basement

• 1d3 Dead Men (1HD, axe 1d6)

This is the meeting room of the Dead Men, the city’s dominant criminal enterprise. Ostrato, a city official, is here negotiating a bribe. 

200gp is hidden under the table. Stairs deeper further into the dungeon.

So, name to help orient (although, this could be better, Less factual and more evocative … especially given the criticisms to come) and then a monster, with a stat. I’m fine with all this, except, perhaps, the lack of an AC. If you’ve got a special attack it’s integrated in, like: “1 Man-maggot (2HD, filthy mouth 1d4 and save or be paralysed for 1d6 rounds)” Then a little room “description” with something generally going on if there are people present. You can get a sense of the better rooms, of which they ar a pretty large percentage, from that encounter, with the city official. Something IS going on, but it’s the bare minimum. 

And this is the good and the bad of the adventure. 

There are no environmental descriptions. You will never get more than “crypt” as a description. Or “cramped tunnel” or some such. Some rooms delve a bit beeper, but, still, only in a surface manner.

“9. King Garibald’s Tomb

Niches along the east wall contain skeletons, 36 in total, each with a silver coin in its mouth. The King’s coffin sits atop an inlaid catafalque, and mosaics decorate the floor.” (ant then some more shit when you open up the coffin)

Somewhat generic descriptions. I suspect that a few more adjectives and adverbs thrown in would help quite a bit, ala, what did I just review? Vault 19? Yeah, prob. Short, but not bland.

Also, did I mention the interactivity/situations? Sure I did. If you retreat from an encounter with the Wax Men then the next day you get framed for murder in town … cause they look like you! Situations. Interactivity. Just like that city official. Only with about a sentence or maybe two more, each. 

This isn’t the promised land. It’s close, but not these. You’d need to add a sentence or two to each room or some such, for example, to bring it to life. How he does that, while still keeping the levels to one per page and the room count to twelve or so, I don’t know. For those of you without the sould os a dreamer, I’m sure it will be fine.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/407420/Under-the-City?1892600

By Jeff Simpson
Buddyscott Entertainment Group
B/X
Level 3

Long before the human settlement of Knup-Tra sprang up, the miners of the Magnitogorsk clan uncovered an ancient hall deep in the Mountains of Fire. A strange being taught them secrets  that led to their downfall. Are you brave enough to plumb the depths of the Underfurnace of the Mountain King and find what caused an entire dwarven settlement to virtually disappear

Travel to an ancient volcano overrun with purple worms wher ecults to dragons and halls to Dwarven gods once stood. As you delve deeper and deeper, a passage to Cthonia, the twisting and turning maze of subterranean tunnels might even be uncovered…but first you must survive the Halls of Cauldron Mountain!

This twelve twenty page adventure features four dungeon levels and a town with about fifty a hundred rooms. It uses a minimalistic style, with a few flourishes in the rooms, ala B2. This results in easy to scan rooms, but an environment that is somewhat less evocative, and interactive, then I generally think the minimal standard of quality should be today. But, I don’t hate it. Which is a major accomplishment.

A dude, doing his own maps and art? Rock on man, that’s the spirit of D&D! As is the mixture of B/X and 1e FF/MM that the adventure uses … just like we all did in the 80’s! I had high hopes for this … and was only moderately disappointed!

I want to take a look at the town, first. There’s a little map for it, but that’s probably not relevant. What is interesting is the page of town businesses. You get a bolded first word, like Carpenter, which is followed by the business description. Of which there are like seventeen. All on, essentially, one page,. He can accomplish this because the businesses just have the interesting bits described. “Run by the bickering couple of Silksif and her husband Granmar, much of their arguing comes from the fact that they are currently broke.” Just enough personality to run the NPC’s as their own place, making them a little memorable, and, maybe, providing some fodder for the DM to riff off of if the town becomes some sort of frequent base. A few other businesses have something notable for sale or some such, like Reeve’s badge of office, worth 900gp, or the smithy that has a silver inlaid breastplate. It never goes in to those excesses that are frequently seen in adventures where the townfolk are described in minute but irrelevant detail, along with a russian novel length backstory that doesn’t matter. These descriptions are focused on gameplay. Which is exactly how it should be!

The dungeon, proper, is a four level design, about twelve thirty or so rooms per level. As I noted, there are about sixteen rooms per page, about eight per column although it’s all in single column that contributes heavily to a wall of text feel. This makes for room descriptions that are relatively short and therefore easy to scan. Generally, a format of this type needs a good sentence to setup the room and maybe one or two more expand on things. What we’re looking for here is a great little descriptive sentence, the centerpiece of the room. That could be read-aloudish or just plant an imagination seed in the DMs head. Following that we’re looking, I think, for a sentence or two about the room that could be DM notes. Maybe a little variation in that format, with a two sentence description and a few sentences of descriptions for more complex rooms, but that’s the general idea, I think, for an adventure format that is trying to squeeze in sixteen rooms per page. You just don’t have the real estate and have to make exquisite usage of what you do have. 

But that’s not what is going on here. Instead we’re getting a slightly expanded minimalism in the description, akin to the B2 room descriptions, or at least the VIBE of the B2 descriptions. “Kitchen All of the knives here are gone. 8 kobolds rummage through the empty barrels.” 5. “5. This open room was once a kitchen. Nothing of value remains. The cabinetry remains in a serviceable condition.” On the plus side the description DOESN’T starts with a keyword. You’re NOT now oriented to the room. I know what a kitchen looks like and can ad-lib what’s in it IF YOU ORIENT ME TO IT. Plus, the information to come is now filtered through the framing of “Kitchen”, which does wonders for the imagination riffing on things and filling in holes. Then we get a very B2 description. A creature, doing something. Rummaging through empty barrels in this case. The famous example, from B2 I think, is orcs shooting dice. But, there’s not actually a description here. That’s not really very evocative. It’s better than just “Kitchen: 8 kobolds” but that’s not saying much in 2022. 

I’m NOT gonna slap in three more room descriptions, CAUSE ITS ALL THE SAME AS THE LAST REVIEW, EXCEPT WORSE.

Mine The floor here is pooled with quicksilver broken up by a few loose stones. For every turn spent in this room, roll a save vs Poison; failure means the character will die in 1d6 hours. The quicksilver drips from the lips of a stone bust of an emaciated dwarf with sunken eyes. If the bust is disturbed, four half-petrified ghouls (AC4) burst from the walls and attack.

Grand Hall There is a large oaken table in this council chamber with a fossilized skeleton of a blue dragon. There are 4 pyroclastic golems here who have been instructed by the orc sham- an to draw a thaumaturgical circle to reanimate it. There is a 5% chance that they succeed just as the party enters the room. The golems under- stand Dwarven and Giant. 6 dwarf skeletons (3HD), 4 armed with longswords and 2 with crossbows, attack anyone entering this room.

Cave The corpse of a rust monster lies next to an un-rusted sword. Disturbing the rust monster or the sword activates a silent alarm that alerts the dwarven vampire in Area 3 of intruders.

Looking at these you can see the format clearly. A brief one sentence description and then a thing, along with a note that is usually mechanics related. The monster, the treasure, the trap, etc. But we also see a certain abstraction. “An alarm sounds” is not very much fun. A pile of bones, or tin cans, dropping from the cei;ling may be more. Or a pile, precariously stacked, that falls down. Some additional interactivity and a little bit more on the descriptive/interactive unified front. Note as well the weird Gand Hall, with some golems, notes about an Orc shaman, and then also some skeletons thrown in for good measure? Weird disconnect there. Every once in awhile you get a great line, like the quicksilver dripping from a dwarf emaciated face with sunken eyeballs … great descriptive text there! 

What the adventure needs is more of those descriptive keywords. Pushing things a little bit more in both descriptions and interactivity, as with the alarm. What we get, instead, is an almost minimal adventure much in the vein of the much beloved B2. But, it’s also 2022. We can do better than B2. 

And, I noite, I have not even touched on this being a level 5-7  3 adventure. For a level range like that I might want a few more complex situations to appear. As it stands, there are drow and a vampire that might roam around a bit, but the adventure is far more “individual stand alone” room based than I think I want at level seven. I should mention that mroe. Oh well.

At least, those, he didn’t fuck it up. And “It could be better” is a far measure better than “This makes me hate my life and wish I had never learned about D&D.” I don’t think this kind of things cuts it today. The splendor of Xyntillian was how much it packed, in interactivity and evocative descriptions, in to so little space. That’s the bar to shoot for,

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/403914/The-Halls-of-Cauldron-Mountain?1892600

By Morten Greis
Greis Games
B/X
Levels 5-7

In a mysterious cave, darkness whispers secrets to those who dare to listen, and daring adventurers can win divinations and learn the magical secrets of Dark Magicians, but not everyone escapes alive from the Troll Pit, where darkness consumes the careless.

This 24 page adventure uses eight pages to describe thirteen rooms, most of which are in an underground cave. It’s got a nice premise, but doesn’t explore its themes enough, and the individual room entries, from read-aloud to DM text, overstay their welcome. I don’t need a theme, unless you tell me there is one. 🙂

Ok, so, a  lot of lame-o hooks about bandits, goblins, apprentices and so on. They all suck and can fuck right off. What IS good is the core premise: inside a cave system in a bog/swamp is a great chasm, a bottomless abyss. And if you listen hard enough, it will whisper secrets to you … Fuck yeah man! SIGN MY ASS UP! This is a good thing. Oracular visions. Places of power. Loot. These are the things that drive a PLAYERS soul. Well, the things that are easy anyway. Other emotions may serve better, but are substantially harder to accomplish. Re: Making the PLAYERS revile the villain … through non-odious/non-fiat means. So, yeah man, “You can become a Dark Magician if you stand by the abyss in the depths of trolls and let an Abyssal Fly take up residence in your body” Uh huh! In the depths of the trolls? Stand on the abyss? LET AN ABYSSAL FLY TAKE UP RESIDENCE?! I got visa’s in my name bitch! Take my money!

There’s are things here that speak to your soul. A crow suddenly taking flight. Goblins, “The goblins can smell the adventurers, and the adventurers can hear the goblins talk about being able to smell people.” YES! That’s the fucking way a goblin works! A scream in the dark on the wandering table. The rays of dawn striking a statue though a hole in the roof, causing a hole in the wall to appear for one hour, revealing a treasure! Or, the mists, rolling in the caves after dark, obscuring things. There are parts here that are just RIGHT. They make sense, in every definition of the words. The context in to which the adventure falls FEELS right. And the rumors! “Two drunk people compete to talk about how dangerous the caves are. Goblins abound! There are lots of them and they eat people raw and preferably alive! It is best to go there during the day when they sleep!” Fun! Interesting! Or perhaps, you’ve been listening to those whispers from the abyss, trying to learn a secret, like “Dire Words of a fateful moment: The character receives a warning of a deadly trap. The next time a trap kills the character, the character is reminded of the words and the deadly effect of the trap is avoided (depending on the type of trap, the character fails to step in, activate, or be exposed to the trap; avoid interacting with or activating the trap).”

But, alas, the promise is not fulfilled.

Our read-aloud is long. VERY long. And thus will not be paid attention to. And it over reveals. Instead of simplifying saying a towering statue it must go on and describe the statue … which leads to the long read-aloud. These things, the details, should be saved for the back and forth between player and DM that is the heart of the D&D experience. And this happens time and time again. In the read-aloud, or, in the DM text. Yes, you could, potentially, make them long. But only f you’ve dona lot of work to make it very scannable and usable at he table. ANd that is a heroes effort seldom found. And not here. Instead, maybe, don’t over describe in the read-aloud. A tower statue stretching to the ceiling will do. THEN tell the DM what is going on so they can relate it to  the players when, hopefully, the fuckwits ask about it.

And, the adventure has this whole Troll Pit thing going on. IDK what that is. Maybe it’s lost in translation or has some cultural context I’m missing? There IS a troll down there. A troll king, a corrupted human. Who basically talks to you. (And the adventure notes that, at 8HD, if too much for the party to handle? This is a level 5-7 adventure, right?) Anyway, the whole Troll Pit thing is not really present and doesn’t come across very well. And, for that matter, neither does the whispers in the darkness, though that manages things better than the troll pit thing does. There a crazy lady in one room, a dude in another who exists only as a whisper, and the core abyss whisper mechanic, with you going deeper and more precarious to get a better listen roll, works well. Still, it all FEELS lightly themed. Perhaps because of the length of the thing? It’s just not FANTASTIC, although it does lean that way with the crazy lady, abyss, voice in the darkness, and that statue. Maybe even the troll king thing, but it’s out of place here. 

And for all that there’s a lot missing. Confusion about the entrances. Read-aloud that is a little too flowery “Only reluctantly it gives way to your light.” Uh uh. Or descriptions in the text that don’t match up to the map very well, not communicating things well.

So, it’s not a disaster, but, also, it’s not a home run either. I think, perhaps, if the theming were stronger or the text a little more organized/shorter/better I might have bumped this in to No Regerts. But, as is, there’s jts too much for me to handle. 

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see those rumors, as well as several encounter descriptions. So, it does give a feel for how the writing is.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/390975/Troll-Pit–A-B-X-adventure?1892600

By Greg Gillespie
Self Published
S&W
Levels 1-7

Gundgathol lies in ruin. Over 250 years ago, an evil host rose from the underdark and pushed the dwarves out of their ancestral mountains. Since that time, orcs and worse have defiled their sacred halls. In recent days, the high dwarven clerics cast their runestones and read the portents: the time has come to retake Gundgathol. Are you brave (or fooloish) enough to enter Dwarrowdeep?

This 336 adventure attempts, once again, to do Moria. It has specific keys, using about half its page count, for about thirteen different areas, and then some D1 hexcrawl & procedural generation for other Moria locations. It’s using a B2-like descriptive format. Do you want that slightly generic feel? Are you willing to put up with doing your own maps (using geomorphs) and keying them and having a generic-ish vibe? Great, then this is for you. 

I am, clearly, not having this shit anymore. 

It’s another attempt at Moria. Moria is too big to key so you get a hex crawl map to get you from location to location, ala D1, and then some rules for using provided geomorphs to create levels and deeps, and some rules on how to populate them. So, you get some DMG like tables and then, the last step, step 15, is “Interpret the Results.” Great. Bring it to life, he means. If I wanted to do that I’d write my own from scratch. I’m not buying an adventure to create it from scratch, procedurally. I’m buying an adventure so I DON’T have to do that. Just grab the old Moria supplement and the DMG and crank some shit out. Why, exactly, do you need this booklet? “But Bryce, how else can you do Moria?” Well, maybe, don’t do fucking Moria if you can’t figure it out. Besides, the Fellowship Moria thing was just a trip through it, not a delve. 

Ok, so, no, some of you are not going to be happy with that analysis. Let us, instead, forget all about the procedural generation thing. Let’s pretend it doesn’t exist. Let’s instead review the maps/keys/areas that are presented. This is six entrance areas and seven other location sites, most of which have 100 or so rooms, or more. (with a notable exception in the ruined tower on the mountain peak that has a dragon.) Let’s just review that, shall we? After all, I don’t really care how much something costs, or background shit or any of that. Let’s just look at the value we’re getting for our $35 for those thirteen areas.

“Four Dwarven Skeletal Guards AL: CE, AC: 4, HD: 1, HP: 8, 7, 5, 4, #AT: 1, DMG: 1d6, lay on the floor here. They burn with malice for the living. One has a pouch with 3d6gp and another has a Seax Knife +1.”

Laying on the floor! Burning with malice for the living! Have you ever read such majesty before on the written page?! Does your heart not leap with joy at the prospects of running this room?! Are you not entertained?! No? You’re not? Ah, then how about this little gem of a room:

“The Orc Rat-Master AL: CE, AC: 6 (Studded and mShield), HD: 1, HP: 5, #AT: 1, Weapon: Whip (1d4), Scimitar (1d6), and Dagger (1d4), Treasure: 5gp, 8ep, 9sp, 2cp, uses this room as his quarters. Under a stone in the floor, under his bed of dirty furs, is a Huge Broken Pale Green Variscite (20gp), a Large Transparent Green Augelite (24gp), and a Small Deep Blue Azurite (20gp).” 

Of course! Masterful!

There’s nothing here. It’s just a hair above a minimalistic keying style. Sure, there’s some rooms that have more text. To no real effect. There are no real evocative descriptions anywhere in this. There is, though, padding: “The Ruined Temple of Thaneduhr: This rough- hewn temple to Thaneduhr All-Father was defaced and defiled by the orcs. It now lies in ruin.” That’s a meaningless couple of sentences, especially to start with. It goes on to describe a large statue with the face changed to that of the orc god, rubble, a bloody altar, and some bodies and chained prisoners. There’s some potential here, but it’s described lifelessly. The rooms are just padded out with stats and what the monster is wielding, and treasure. If this is removed you may get, mostly, one sentence per room. “The orcs here are wagering over a fight between two stirge” The alcove contains a pile of decaying corpses infested with rot grubs. Something partially buried in the dirt gleams at the back of this dead end. There’s no life in any of this. I’d have much preferred to gloss over the stats and weapons and instead have an extra sentence or two to bring the aggressively genetic minimalism to life. Because that’s what you should be paying for in an adventure.

I can roll on a table. I can find a program to roll on a table for me and spit out a generic dungeon. This is not the heart of D&D. The heart of D&D is the magic of imagination and the weirdness of the interactivity. That’s what you’re paying a designer for. Otherwise just go play some Angband. 

Barrowmaze had some life. The towers thing had some life. The Caverns thing was, as is this, aggressively minimal and generic in a way that doesn’t work with the adventure. This needs A LOT more of step 15. A LOT more of it. 

“Dwarrowdeep is the single largest dwarven themed adventure in the history of role-playing games.” I don’t love you, you don’t love me. Da Da Da”

This is $35 at DriveThru.There’s no preview because it’s a zip file blah blah blah. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/384269/Dwarrowdeep?1892600